Metroid Prime: Delusion
by Andor01
Summary: A story that can indeed fit into the Metroid Prime Trilogy, Samus Aran faces one last trial on Phaaze's account before Phazon's influence can truly be over.
1. Left Behind

**Metriod Prime Delusion, my version of a final chapter to the Prime Trilogy(and no, I won't overdo it) starts with the Chozo Gunship's logs, just like Prime 3 started out. Of course I'd love to start this story with an epic opening, or something fantastic like the Prime Trilogy, but sadly, literature cannot cover such a feat. So... I present this story!**

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Most recent entry: Assist Galactic Federation in assault against Space Pirates and Dark Samus.

Destination: Phaaze, via wormhole.

Objective: Land on surface of Phaaze, find Dark Samus. Destroy her.

Life-Monitors green, Samus Aran available for duty.

Setback!: Samus Aran's suit is exposed to toxic Phazon. Venting suit……

Clear. Samus Aran no longer in range. Detecting unknown lifeform attempting to enter Chozo gunship. Locking down…

Samus Aran's Gunship no longer recognized her as its pilot and therefore shut her out of the ship. With her suit now majorly enhanced with Phazon(and even then the atmosphere of the planet was still toxic), she had no choice but to go hunting for Dark Samus herself…

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…BANG!!! Aurora Unit 313 collapsed. The insect-like body crumbled and withered until it was nothing but a cloud of Phazon. That cloud returned to the shape of Dark Samus, screaming her last shouts of pain as the substance she knew as her own body began to dissolve. She felt it all, the planet and Space Pirate technology, and even Samus's body, all being freed of Phazon. To everyone else, it was as if someone had sent a shockwave that completed dissolved all Phazon from the world, but to her, it was the worst possible sensation imaginable.

Samus relaxed as the Phazon inside her disappeared forever. The instant she was cleansed, the Gunship located her and charted a route towards the opening in space, the wormhole created by the leviathan.

Dark Samus dissolved, her essence disappearing, and all Samus could do was look at the bluish world around her as it began to fall apart. She blasted her way out of the small arena-like shaft and found herself on the planet surface. Even as she sprinted away from the Phazon room, her visor commanded for her gunship to come pick her up.

The hatch closed, and Samus leapt into the pilot's seat even as the ground beneath her ship crumbled. She lifted off the surface and took the routed already charted for her leading to the wormhole. Behind her a bright light appeared as Phaaze exploded. The shockwave that followed was unimaginable, and it was also the worst possible catastrophe any of the pirate ships, both big and small, could have dealt with.

The leviathan was impacted by the shockwave and fell apart immediately. Samus's ship simply spun out of control as the right exhaust pipe on the ship burst into blue flame. She banked left, momentarily blinded by the light and dazed by the impact of the shockwave. When she stopped turning, the first thing she laid her weak eyes on was a Space Pirate Battleship. Her first instinct was to reach for the trigger and fire everything she had, but the red light ringing in the ship's cockpit stopped her.

She looked at the screen on the lower right of the cockpit. The ship was damaged and was about to shut down, and unless she found a place to land, there was no way of knowing if she would survive that.

So, she simply dove down to avoid being spotted. She could see that the Phazon-enhanced weapons and technology on the ship had completely shut down, and so blasting the hanger door open was easy. She flew in and landed her ship. As soon as she stepped out onto the metal flooring she bolted to the controls and closed a magnetic field over the hanger exit. Now there would be air AND a tractor beam to hold her ship in place…

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Every pirate in the battleship was running around to one destination or another. The battle ship had just lost all of its Phazon-based power and there were just too many problems for one commander to handle at once!

One of the pirates whose main focus was security was sending messages to detain the hostile life forms that were being held on board. He was sent camera footage of all the current situations, including a security breach in hangar five. The pirate's eyes widened and he called the captain to view the monitor. The captain tensed, not only in surprise, but also in fear that the dreaded "Hunter" was here. Nonetheless, troops were dispatched instantly.

Samus looked around the hangar carefully, she figured she'd already been spotted by a security camera somewhere in here. She was right. Along with spotting the two cameras positioned on both far corners of the hangar, the only door slid open and a squadron of seven Space Pirates tore through the doorway.

All seven pirates opened fire instantly, and Samus jumped out of the way and rolled to the side before effortlessly jumping back onto her feet, all the while blasting the pirates with her arm cannon. Her recent upgrades meant that she had an advanced cannon that fired what Samus knew as the Nova Beam, all the more deadly for the pirates.

In that one more, four of the pirates were dead. The remaining three made the worst mistake they possibly could have made; they stayed and kept firing. Samus returned the fire with one shot and a missile. The first shot blasted straight into the first pirate's chest, and the missile blew the second and third pirates up altogether. Samus then fired to missiles for the two cameras in the hangar.

Aran took over the controls regarding the hangar and made sure the magnetic field was weak enough so that the ship would be able to fly out effortlessly when she desired. But for now, it needed to repair itself, and Samus sealed the door behind her, locking her away from her ship and locking any pirates from getting to it.

Now she was in the battleship's complex interior. Who knew what was here! The first thing she noticed was that everything seemed so… red. But that was probably because the alarms were going off. She walked silently across the hallway, meeting only two defense turrets and blowing both to pieces before they managed to take a single shot.

The Space Pirates were having the worst day of their lives. The genetic experiments weren't finished and their subjects had broken loose. Already the pirates had closed off three of the eight labs and could hear the pirates locked in being eaten, dissolved, or whatever else the monsters did, on the other side of the wall.

Samus heard motion behind her. Two pirates stood at the far end of the hallway, and they had spotted her. She responded by firing a missile (and missed) and hiding inside the nearest room that branched off from the hallway. She stood there motionless as she heard the pirates walk cautiously across the hall.

As soon as they were within fighting distance, Samus whirled from her hiding spot and shot the first one in the head at point blank range. Before the second pirate even registered what had happened. Samus whacked him in the face with her arm cannon. He fell to the floor, dazed. Samus picked the limp and dazed pirate up with one hand continued her walk, dragging it along with her.

Too soon, she found the experimentation labs. The guard pirates opened fire. Samus threw the pirate he'd held captive up in front of her as a meat shield and eventually grew tired of waiting. She tossed the now dead pirate towards one of the shooters and opened fire against the others. She took one slight blow to her left shoulder before they all died. The only sound was one of the computers blowing sparks.

That same computer ran haywire and began reacting differently, the lights flickering in the room and the test subjects being awakened. The only thing separating them from Samus was a metal wall.

Of course, that metal wall had to malfunction and opened right then and there, revealing to large Parasite Queens, unchained and hungry.

_Oh shit._

One of them instantly lunged for Samus, missing her by centimeters. Its greenish spit showered the nearby wall, burning it to a minor degree. Samus decided it would be smart to leave right about now.

She bolted out the door and reached for the control panel, setting the door to go on permanent lockdown. But even she knew it would help much. Maybe it would buy her a second, but nothing more.

The pair of giant parasites splits paths, going merely on a desire to feed. The first decided to follow Samus and tackled the wall, shattering it instantly. On the other side, Samus watched the hallway suddenly lose its right wall, replaced by a giant bug with an unnatural desire to kill. She ducked from the showering metal shards before taking a measure of last resort and changing to the morph ball. She sped straight past three space pirates, who were eaten and swallowed whole almost instantly. If they were lucky, they didn't even have time to see what had attacked them.

Odds were they didn't, but Samus didn't care at the moment. As soon as she was clear of the ruined metal wall, she returned back to her human form, quickly scanning a passing terminal, hoping to find some sort of layout of the ship itself.

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The Space Pirates now had two Parasite Queens to worry about, and the "Hunter" was on their ship! As if the simple fact that they no longer had Phazon with them and their ship had lost most of its controls wasn't a big enough problem to deal with, let alone the damage from the Galactic Federation's assault. Could this day get any worse?

The Parasite Queen was still tearing through the ship's hull just to catch Samus, who was able to move much faster but had no idea where to go. But then, she usually had that problem.

She stopped and kicked down a simple door and jumped in, and found herself in a lifesaving room. A terminal and a ventilation shaft were all the room had. She downloaded everything she could from the terminal until she saw the Parasite Queen laid eyes on her once again. She changed to the Morph ball just as the mostly swung one of its claws and crushed the terminal and she rolled into the ventilation shaft.

How many times had she done this now? Right now, it didn't matter. At least she knew she was good at it. As she bombed her way up into a higher shaft and began to room across the ship, she presented her data to the Gunship, which analyzed the Pirate Battleship's interior design almost instantly. The layout of the ventilation system was presented, and so was the current state of the battleship.

Aran looked at her options. The Parasite Queen was probably trying to find another victim and was most likely heading in her direction. If she sped up just a little bit more, she could make it all the way to hangar bay 18. To do that, she'd have to speed up a little. The ventilation shaft she was speeding through would cross over to the other side of the hallway, but if she didn't get there in time the Parasite Queen would get to that pipe first and no doubt tear it up as the bug kept searching for a meal.

Thank heaven for the Boost Ball. She bounced up into the upper part of the shaft and boosted across the hallway just mere seconds before the parasite queen tore the revealed vent to shreds. Samus congratulated herself and continued to roll through the vent.

She came out in a small recharge station used by the pirates for weapon reloading and such, but she could use it too. After receiving her full battery of missiles, she walked out of the room and found hangar 18 just a few meters away.

The first Parasite Queen had done enough damage to ensure that the Battleship would never be able to fly again, but why did it have to unknowingly shatter a barrier holding a colony of thirty or so Metroids loose? So to answer the Pirate's rhetorical question, yes, this day could get worse.

Samus waltzed into the hangar to find ten Space Pirates and one Pirate Commando already there. The Seeker Missile in her cannon shot five more missiles, each locked on to another pirate. Four of them hit and killed their target while the fifth was batted away by the Commando.

Seven pirates left, and Samus figure killing them would be easy, but she didn't count on what happened next.

The hangars on this wing of the ship were neighboring each other, all the odd-numbered hangars on one side and the even-numbered on the other, which meant hangar 18 had neighbors 16 and 20. In hangar 16, a friend had decided to tear through the wall that divided the two.

The wall suddenly shattered, raining metal down on everyone in the room. Two pirates fell victim to that. The other five retreated as they laid eyes on what had torn through the wall.

The second Parasite Queen eyed the six life forms in the room. Five of them fled. Instinctively, the mother parasite leaned over and snagged one, swallowing it whole.

Samus had had enough. She turned over to the hangar control panel and flipped one lever, entering a command in her visor as she did so. As the lever was flipped, the magnetic field for this hangar disappeared. Instantly, all the air in the chamber was sucked out, pirates, parasite queen and Samus all with it. All but the Hunter would suffocate. Samus floated there until the command on her visor paid off, and her gunship, now repaired enough to fly steadily, came to pick her up. She leaped into the pilot's seat and opened up the layout of the pirate battleship one last time.

Aran targeted the battleship's core reactor from where she was. Within seconds, she had gotten the perfect angle so that the missiles she would fire would tear through the hull just enough to damage the generator, which would give each pirate on board one nasty explosion.

Fire.

Boom! One small explosion from a missile led to another larger explosion. The center of the ship exploded. The engines were ripped apart by fire. Flames engulfed everything inside the ship, including the first Parasite Queen, still inside, and then finally the last explosion tore everything inside to shreds. Ruined the pirates' day, too.

Samus turned away from the debris and realized that an entire fleet of Pirate Battleships were still out there, not to mention the small individual fighters that were scattered everywhere. She sighed in exhaustion, but instead chose to fly away from them. Maybe flying to the debris of Phaaze would provide her enough cover to chart an escape…

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One of the Pirate Commandos spotted Samus's gunship and ordered for the fleet to follow. As damaged as they may be, there's no way Samus could have the firepower to avoid them all. She was skilled in combat, when he was on land. But they doubted she was as skilled out in space.

Samus flew into the dusty space that used to be Phaaze. There was a lot of rock still floating around and bluish dust, the particles coming together and then bouncing off each other, only attract again. Then they'd repel. It seemed to be never-ending. But with huge chunks of rock floating aimlessly, maybe she'd manage to lose the entire fleet of pirates behind her. Eagar to get out of here and away from Phaaze's remains, she grabbed the thrusters and pushed.

Had Samus and the pirates following her thoroughly thought about where they were flying, they probably wouldn't have flown into the dusty space they were in now. Every few seconds the space around them would flicker, and if it were a hologram with a fading signal. But really, Phazon particles were saying their last goodbye to their last victims.

A leviathan had once crashed into a planet in the Dasha region known as Aether. The effects were a mirrored planet in a separate yet somewhat tangible dimension named Dark Aether. Earlier, another leviathan had crashed onto Tallon IV and mutated a Metroid into a giant spider-like menace known as Metroid Prime. The most recent Leviathan had been able to open a wormhole, thus tearing through space itself!

All these destructive and hazardous creations and effects had come from Phaaze. Obviously these effects it had were nearly limitless, unpredictable, and obviously barely explainable by science! Just what would happen if they sailed straight into the heart of it all?

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**If you want, take another look at the name of this story. Maybe it'll help guess what Phaaze's dead atmosphere will do to Samus and the Pirates this time. The next chapter should be up soon, yadda yadda yadda. Oh, and I do not own Samus, Metroid, or another other of their trademarks or characters. Thanks for reading, though! Hope you guys like! Review if you wish! I'm open to all you have to say. Seriously.**


	2. Arrival

**Chapter two! Maybe the whole arrival into the cloud thingy wasn't worded or expressed the way I wanted it, but hopefully it's not too bad for you.**

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Samus banked left as hard as she could. A flurry of Space Pirate missiles shot past her as she did. An entire fleet, damaged as it may be, still somehow found the strength to turn and shoot at her.

The Gunship jerked abruptly as a Pirate fighter managed to shoot the right wing several times. She banked left, preventing further damage. Smoke began to emit from the damaged wing, and a further alarm warned Samus that the destruction was dangerously close to the missiles she carried. If those weapons were triggered while they were still in the ship, Samus would be gone.

She could either abandon ship or come up with an alternate solution, probably much riskier and endangered her life a lot more…

Eh, why not.

She double-checked the danger she was in. Her gunship showed her specific details on how bad the right wing had been shot. Temperatures inside the metal were rising and the weapons were only a few minutes from detonating…

She performed a corkscrew. Her ship flipped upwards and spiraled back towards the flurry of Battleships. Samus just then realized just how many ships she was facing. She didn't even have time to count the small fighters, but she saw at least sixteen battleships. Those were the only ones that had survived so far, but they were plenty a threat.

At least, fifteen of them were. Samus adjusted her course to fly directly towards the nearest battleship. Normally it would have opened fire, but most of its weapons were no longer powered due to the Phazon loss and those that were operational hadn't been manned yet, as most of the pirates were still trying to recover from their magical power source disappearance. And even worse, many of the pirates had been enhanced with Phazon, and the sudden drain would be a bit hard to readjust to. Many died instantly because of the sudden loss. That was probably why the Parasite Queens on the first battleship Aran had landed on were so traumatized.

It didn't matter. Samus was clear of most of the enemy fire and flew right above the battleship's bow. She launched all the missiles she had, stopping as soon as the right wing's batteries were vacant. A pair of missiles remained in her left wing. The missiles she fired were each sent to a different point on the ship, based on the logs she had downloaded from the other battleship before he destroyed it. If ever a Space Pirate ship had collapsed on itself, now was the time. Each missile landed on pinpoint locations and caused maximum damage.

Samus pulled up and looped again in time to avoid the explosion. No Pirates on the ship had been able to evacuate, though. The pirate ship collapsed and pirates were either crushed, sucked into cold space, or engulfed in the flames that followed. Three small pirate fighters had been a little too close and were showered in the debris. None survived.

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The cloud of phazon particles that were in the empty space that was once called Phaaze sensed lifeforms nearby. By nature, they took a deeper look at these newcomers. Some had been previously touched by phazon. In fact, they all had. But the source of Phazon had been destroyed, and the third party hosts had already lost the substance completely. Only this planet-sized cloud of phazon atoms remained. But, like phazon itself, these remains could "feel" and "think". Not in the same way Samus or Pirates or even Chozo could understand exactly, but it was living all the same.

These newcomers drew closer to the cloud. Before, Phazon had mutated, controlled, grown, and even created a clone of a planet, even if it was in a different dimension. Now, this cloud of phazon would continue with the "different dimension" path used previously by another leviathan, but this time, it would be different…

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Samus's Gunship beeped red suddenly. Her ship had an air leak and she was losing oxygen fast. Outside, a single pirate fighter had managed to breach Aran's ship. Fifteen Pirate Battleships and hundreds of small fighters chased after her.

Samus wasn't aware that the cloud of Phazon was still dangerous, nor did any of the pirates see how the cloud seemed to be flowing towards them and many particles of the dying Phazon were simply circling each other.

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Phantom-like tendrils of phazon wrapped around each ship, not solid enough to be detected even by Chozo technology. Then, each ship entered the cloud. Samus locked her suit to save her from the loss of air. Outside, she could see nothing but light blue. Then, everything went black.

From an outsider's point of view, they would have seen several ships flying through a cloud of phazon, until the cloud was too thick to see through and the ships were gone. But they didn't come out the other side.

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The cockpit of Samus's ship cleared and she saw a sky. A clean blue sky with clouds and a bright sun. Then she saw rock. A planet was beneath her, a familiar one, and she was a bit too distracted trying to understand why she could see Tallon IV beneath her as her gunship's right wing collided with one of the mountains.

Her ship spun out of control, headed straight for the surface. She gripped the controls but it was already too late. The last thing she did was press a button and a protective wall of metal closed around the cockpit. Then, impact.

One of the Space Pirate Battleships appeared above Tallon IV's area known as the Tallon Overworld. The captain began yelling orders to those pirates still alive and operating their terminals. The Battleship was in a collision course for a mountain, and there was no avoiding it. The pirate captain(a commando, to be exact), jumped and strapped himself in for the impact he knew would come.

The mountain crumbled as the metal ship crashed, the latter ripping in half and falling towards the lush green ground below. The landing echoed across all of Tallon… Or was it even Tallon IV at all? They had last been near Phaaze's coordinates, how had they moved? 5.1 trillion teratrons(exact calculations based off GF technology) of a planet didn't just migrate.

Right now, the pirates didn't matter. The crash had ended. The pirate commando wasn't moving. He wouldn't ever again. A branch from a tree the ship had landed on had torn through the command bridge and stabbed into the pirate's chest.

Other pirates suffered similar fates. One in the cargo bay had survived and found himself half buried in loose debris, but foolishly began removing it. It apparently wasn't as loose as he'd believed, and a broken maintenance crane came loose from its new position to crush the pirate. Other fatalities were all over the ship. Only a hundred or so had survived.

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Samus Aran woke up. The first thing she saw was her seat. Logic quickly came back to her. She was lying down on her back, on the ceiling of the ship. The gunship had been flipped during the crash. Slowly, memories of the crash, Phaaze, Dark Samus, and the cloud came back to her.

The hunter got to her feet slowly, painfully, dizzy and shaken up, but had no serious damage. Her suit malfunction had been minimal, only the PED suit had been broken, but since Phazon was gone, it didn't really matter.

She rebooted her ship, slowly, and searched through the accessible functions. Her first question was why was she on Tallon IV? If the ship couldn't access its logs, than she'd have to go out and find the answer herself.

Turns out she'd have to do just that. What a surprise. The ship was barely able to function, and it would be a while before the auto-repair program would activate, but even then, the ship didn't have enough power to work on its own and the right wing was severely damaged.

Outside the wrecked gunship, Samus witnessed Tallon IV's lush swamp again, not exactly happy but not the worst memory she ever had. The rain had already set in and she could hear native beasts all around her. But there was some other sound in the air…

She looked up to see what looked like an asteroid coming down towards the planet. Her mind went from asteroid to Leviathan instantly, the Phazon meteors that spread Phazon across the galaxy. But it wasn't a leviathan, it was made of metal.

It was Frigate Orpheon.

Samus pulled up her scanning visor. The results were unexpected.

_Identified as Frigate Orpheon, one of the many Pirate Stations used as genetic experimentation sites. Database files indicate this particular station had been destroyed and crashed into Tallon IV._

That wasn't right.

_Subject appears to be a compilation of Space Pirate technology, deceased organisms and Phazon particles. It is possible this is not the original station._

That made more sense. This was not the original. She had been on the original, and she'd watched it blow up! She was there to see the remains!

The Frigate disappeared behind the mountains, and the crash vibrated across the entire section of the planet. Samus no longer cared, she knew what happened to it. All she cared about now was learning about where she was.

She scanned a nearby bush, already knowing it would yield unusual results.

_Target is composed of plant and phazon cells. Target is drifting from this dimension, suggesting phazon involvement beyond simple structure._

That was scary. What was worse than reading that?

Samus thought too soon. She heard a shriek and whirled around towards the sound, arm cannon at the ready. What climbed over the cliff and into her line of sight was a creature she'd never expected to see again.

_Ing!!!_ Samus almost panicked. The warrior ing shrieked again and charged towards her, but she fired back. One of the beast's legs fell off, but it continued its attack. Samus jumped out of the way and switched to her morph ball. She returned to her original form and shot the beast from behind with a missile. The Warrior ing slowed, ice forming around its joints. But one of its legs swung at Samus's feet, knocking her into the mud. She rolled over and pointed her cannon straight into the beast's red eye. Her Nova Beam punctured straight through and pierced the monster's deranged brain. Needless to say, it was dead.

The hunter jumped to her feet and observed the dead creature. She scanned the monster.

_Deceased Warrior Ing. Native to Dark Aether, this species of Ing, along with all others, is extinct. Unusual phazon cells are within the interior, suggesting they are the only reason this creature is present._

So… Phazon made this Ing?

Samus was lost, needless to say, but there would be time to study once her ship was back in order. Right now, she needed an energy cell…

She turned around, glancing in the direction of where the Frigate Orpheon had crashed. She began the trek there, expecting Pirates, if they had survived the crash.

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**Long delay, but this chapter should be posted. Not sure if I captured everything the way I wanted to, but let me know what you think. I appreciate all opinions.**


	3. Frigate Orpheon

**It's been too long. And so begins Chapter 3. Hope you enjoy!**

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One pirate, an "expendable soldier", as labeled by some computer systems, stumbled through the Frigate Orpheon after it crashed. Somehow he'd survived the crash and the Parasites. Now he was dazed and tripping over every scrap of metal on the floor as he rushed for the hangars, hoping at least one escape pod could take him back home.

There were other pirates that had also survived the crash, but most of them had been severely wounded. One had been cut at the ankles and could not longer move his legs, while another had broken his neck. Another pirate's armor had partially melted into the wall and his skin, immobilizing him as he just stood in the hallway, roaring in pain as the armor cooled on his flesh. All in all, the station was in no position to defend itself.

On the lower levels(or rather, the rooms nearest to the ground), a few pirates had fallen with the ship inside the chamber and broken their legs in the process. One had snapped his arm and somehow ended up dangling by his shoulder and torso from the ceiling. Only three pirates were unharmed and trying to lift a huge plank of metal from a fourth, who say pinned underneath but otherwise unharmed.

Needless the say, the last thing these pirates needed was a hull breach. But that's exactly what they got. The far side of the dark room suffered a small leak, with water from Tallon IV slowly dripping in. On the outside of the ship, this appeared particularly weak. Suddenly the puncture exploded as an arm cannon shot through it. As water now began to flow inside, Samus flowed in with it. She landed hard on the metal floor as the water was up to her ankles. The three mobile pirates stopped helping their friend and opened fire.

Samus rolled to the side and pulled up the scanning visor before shooting back.

_Phazon-Pirate. This Pirate trooper is mainly composed of phazon particles, taking shape of a Space Pirate to match previously known pirates on Tallon IV. Scans indicate this specimen is fully functional and suffers only minor wounds to the left shoulder. Any weapon should be able to penetrate light armor._

That was more than enough, all pirates here recorded the same basic idea. Somehow these Phazon particles had not only created a familiar world around her, but given it familiar and fitting creatures to go with it!

But right now, "Penetrate Light armor" indeed. Samus opened fire, a single shot from her Nova Beam more than enough to tear through the light armor and disintegrate the fake pirate's heart. Two more similar shots took care of the other two.

The fourth pirate, still pinned down, now had nothing to do. The water level was slowly rising and would drown him soon. Samus couldn't care less. She walked right past it and began to walk up the stairs, not looking back. The pirate roared. Not that would be able to for much longer...

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Samus opened the next door and prepared her cannon for any more pirates. But none were there to attack. They were all either dead or dying. Three of them were already on the floor. Samus took the time to find out what happened to them.

_Burns on subject's arm suggest his mounted rifle malfunctioned and fired several stray shots before exploding. Subject was killed by recoil and trauma to the head._

Well, there was a dent in the wall right next to the body. That made sense. Next.

_Subject was shot in the neck by a friendly soldier. Small shards of metal are in subject's armor and head._

Sucks to be him; On to the third.

_Pirate appears to have tripped over a faulty cable which electrocuted him. Subject's armor shattered into several hundred pieces._

Samus could imagine how the entire incident had gone down. This place really was grim…

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Back at the Pirate Battleship, still recovering from the crash, the remaining pirates had left the ship and found themselves in the lush landscape of the Tallon Overworld. One of the commandos was standing near surviving equipment attempting to construct a radio powerful enough to send an SOS. There had been fourteen of them just a while ago, if this Battleship had just crashed, where were the other thirteen? If they could regroup, there was no doubt they'd survive long enough to be rescued, or reconstruct their own ship and leave this lush planet. But… where had the planet come from? They still hadn't discovered that this world was made purely out of phazon particles.

Out of nowhere, a cloud of dark blue appeared and hovered over one pirate for a split second before flowing into him. The pirate roared in shock and fell to his knees. The other pirates watched in fear, weapons at the ready, but the pirate being attacked, in his mind, he froze in shock. This possession… It felt so familiar…

Samus used her grapple to swing over the gap in the metal floor. She landed on the other side of the room and opened another door. She walked into a control room, separate computers all stationed on separate panels for manual use. This looked promising! Maybe she could locate a power source here…

The first panel overlooked the station's weapon systems. Clearly, this one was useless now. On to the next one.

The second and third panels were dysfunctional, but the fourth controlled security. The panel was already freaking out and alarming to every hull breach and so on, so Samus took manual control. She ignored all security breaches and went searched for all still functional stations. Only a few areas of the downed frigate were still working, and even less weren't flooded. Samus searched for the nearest target before turning off the computer. She stopped to download the frigate schematics before leaving for the biological chambers.

By now half of the frigate had flooded and the incredibly small number of surviving pirates had grown even smaller due to the floods and broken doors that wouldn't open for the trapped pirates. Bloggs, large quid-shark like creatures that had previously been discovered on Aether's Torvus Bog swam through the newly flooded rooms in search of meat, usually finding stray pirates or meat from the failed parasite queens experiments. Luckily Samus wouldn't be here for much longer.

The door didn't open, so Samus kicked it. Usually it wouldn't have budged, but it was already weakened by the crash, so it fell apart at her kick. Her cannon was ready to fire, but nothing came at her. She entered the room and found what she was looking for. Among the many large screens, a few still optional and displaying their data, was a sign she was looking for; a power cable.

She activated her X-ray visor, suddenly seeing through most of the room's wreckage and minor accessories. Her eyes followed the cable from the projector screens to its source. The cable went to the back of the room, which was a bit obstructed by scraps. Samus turned on the grapple beam that had come in so handy and got rid of the scrap in less that a minute. Returning to the combat visor, she walked forward and found the Energy Cell she was looking for. She twisted and pulled the cell from its socket. The instant she pulled it out, the projector screens went black and the flickering lights stopped working, the room now being illuminated by the faint glow of the water outside the glass window.

Samus grasped the energy cell, satisfied with her work, and clamped in onto her suit. She turned around and slowly walked out of the room. Just as she was walking through the torn doorway, she heard the creak of metal and a loud clang behind her. She whirled around to see the metal floor in front of her being torn apart by something beneath it. A large claw about the same size as Samus's arm tore through the metal flooring, until the entire being was able to emerge through the new hole. Samus pulled up her scanning visor quickly.

_Parasite Larva:_

_A subject of the Space Pirate genetic testing, this larva has not yet matured. Saliva is still acidic and will cause damage upon contact. Maximum firepower recommended. Biological scans indicate the jaws are overheating, suggesting this specimen has suffered a wound, likely causing its glands to either cease or overwork. Large amounts of acidic spit are being produced, yet this is the best place for damaging it._

Samus didn't have to be told twice about any of that. The Parasite Larva was coughing up huge amounts of green acidic spit and firing it straight at her. She kneeled down as two blobs flew past her helmet and fired an ice missile.

The ice froze the monster's jaws and saliva, for a short time. The monster easily shattered its small bondage and tried to squirm further out of the hole it had come through. Samus decided it was a bad idea to let that happen.

Taking aim, her Nova Beam glowed brightly as she fired superheated plasma into the metal flooring around the Parasite Larva. Aside from burning the Larva's weak and vulnerable shell, its grip had melted away and it plunged back down to where it had come from. Samus looked down into the hole, where she saw an unpleasant sight.

The Parasite Larva had fallen down into a sea of its kind. There were dozens of Parasite Larva in the room below! Some of them were dead and others being torn apart as its brothers ate it. Many were injured in some way, either directly impairing their ability to move or just something seemingly minor like the original's mass production of saliva.

The hunter didn't stick around for more. She had her energy cell, she didn't dead to exterminate them all. Besides, as soon as this section of the Frigate flooded, they'd die anyway. She backed away and began the trek back to her ship.

Samus figured it was time to mix things up a bit and blast her way out of the ship. Only this time, she'd make her own exit. She charged the Nova Beam until it couldn't charge any more, and fired at the Frigate wall. As she'd hoped, the metal fell apart at the heat. Samus jumped and grabbed onto the metal beam nearby to hold her steady as water from the outside flooded in. As soon as it was over, the hunter walked out of the room and found herself on Tallon Overworld's seabed.

[][]

The Space Pirates in Tallon Overworld were in for the fight of their lives. Ing had appeared out of nowhere and started possessing troops, turning them into Dark Pirate Troopers. The mere transformation of it all was shocking, but they opened fire upon their darkened brothers. The fights didn't last long; somehow the light Pirates had defeated the Ing possessions. But there was a down-side. The SOS beacon had been destroyed and now they were stranded on a planet, and if any pirates were looking for them, they weren't looking in the right area… Their situation looked hopeless…

Samus moved bushes and plants out of the way as she walked towards her Gunship. It was still upside down and still blowing several sparks, but this energy cell would be enough to get the ship on its way to auto-repair. She walked inside the dimly lit cockpit and removed a smooth ceiling plate until she found the slot that fit with the cell model she held. She pushed it in and twisted. The cockpit instantly flickered to life, power flowing to all systems essential and nonessential. Samus acted quickly and turned off all programs that wouldn't help her find out where she was exactly or help repair the ship. She heard the engines trying to restart outside the ship. It would be a while before the ship could even right itself…

Samus stepped outside. Now what? Her Gunship was repairing itself, but it would take a while… Was there anything that she remembered on Tallon IV that could help her?

_The phazon particles floated amongst the mirrored world they had created by the mere memories of their victim. Another tendrail of almost invisible Phazon particles wrapped around Samus's helmet, searching memories and the data files inside…_

_Aether… Dark Samus… Hunter Ghor… Amorbis… so many things to use… but finally, one was selected. Randomly, yet ironically fitting…_

Samus looked down. A shadow had just passed. She whirled around and searched the sky. There was nothing there…

She pulled up the X-ray visor once again. She saw through the trees, and then she spotted what she was looking for. It looked like a dragon of some sort…

Ridley!!!

Samus switched to combat visor and placed her free hand on her cannon, taking aim even as Ridley glided in the sky at least a mile away. The dragon hadn't even noticed her, and was flying away from her position. It glided over the fallen Frigate Orpheon and passed out of the Tallon Overworld boundaries.

But Ridley was here. Samus was ready. She'd killed that dragon so many times before, it wouldn't be any different this time…

* * *

**Not nearly what I'd hoped, I just wanted to update soon. Sorry about the delay. Anyway, I'll get to work with the next one. Thanks for reading. Review if you wish!**


	4. Two 'Friends'

**Onto business.**

* * *

A Pirate Commando walked through the camp of pirate shelters, created from the battleship wreckage. The pirate leader felt very little emotion, and no more fear for its life than usual. These pirates has served side-by-side and had been through a huge ordeal; they had been introduced to Phazon, caused Dark Samus's revival after her defeat on Aether, become slaves to her will, enhanced by the Phazon virus, moved the source of the Phazon, suffered a defeat, lost all their phazon and new physical powers, and then crash-landed on what they believed was Tallon IV, a planet ridiculously far away, yet they had arrived there within minutes.

The pirates were calculating how much food and drink they had, how long it would last them if they divided it in the right way, if the SOS signals were even working, and if any help would come.

Quite honestly, the SOS antenna was a waste of power to them. They didn't realize that they were in a cloud of Phazon, mimicking worlds around them. The signal they thought they were sending was simply going into the rest of the Phazon cloud, never leaving the "atmosphere". Simply put, they were stranded, and the only way out would be to fly out, if the Phazon cloud didn't stop them first. Like all particles of Phazon, this cloud form had a will, too. It would keep the hosts inside itself only because it was in its nature.

Any attempt to fly out would be met by illusions, that would direct the pirates back into the depths. But explaining this to them, or Samus, or anyone, for that matter, would be futile, simply because the cloud's power and control could not be explained geographically or measures by any unit, because it was an entirely new concept to them all, it was no more impossible to understand that it was to understand and live under the concept of a superior dimension.

But the pirates likely didn't care. Only a few minutes ago, a gathering of purple cloud-like Ing had arrived and possessed the pirates. Now they were all dark Pirates. This made them much more dangerous, and yet somehow they would end up as targets.

Out of seemingly nowhere(and it was, technically) something smashed into one of the pirate shelters and tore it to pieces. The pirates inside were killed instantly. All the others whirled around and drew their weapons. A crudely constructed turret the pirates had installed for protection turned to aim at the new arrivals.

There was only one new arrival. It was menacing enough as it was, but the pirates new that form and they knew that it could have existed. So, they hesitated; Big mistake.

The new arrival fired huge blasts of energy and quickly wiped out a third of the pirate survivors. The Pirate Commando growled and opened fire, the others following his gesture. The new arrival shook off these blasts and fired back a beam of plasma, rapidly burning each pirate until nothing was left. The Pirate Commando leaped to safety and lost his mounted pistol instead of his life. He leaped behind some ship debris for safety.

The Dark Commando tended to his arm, and his melee weapon extended. Behind the metal slab he called shelter, the remaining pirates were running from this monstrosity, but not getting very far. One of the pirates felt the cold metallic hands grasping it by the waste and tossing it across the make-shift camp. The crude turret was firing as fast as possible, but doing little damage. Finally one of its plasma bullets pierced the monstrosity's armor. The monster whirled around and casually crushed the turret and the pirate operating it.

The Dark Commando could hear it; everyone else was dead. It was a terrifying thought that they were destroyed in barely five minutes. The Commando heard heavy footprints of the monster's two metal feet. Then, silence…

The Pirate jumped as one metal hook tore straight through the metal slab. The pirate moved to avoid the other hook and swung his melee weapon. The metal monster caught it easily and stared. The pirate stared into the small red eyes of a character he knew to be dead.

But this was very much real. The metal monster grabbed the pirate and threw it across the camp, where it would land impaled on a metal rod sticking out of a destroyed shelter.

The pilot of the metal monster exited the vehicle and began tending to the one bullet hole it had suffered; it was a minor concern and could easily be fixed. The pilot slowly reentered its metal cover, and thought to itself, _"This group has finished bothering us."_

[][]

The Hunter known as Samus stood in the moist jungles of Tallon IV, waiting for her gunship to complete its auto-repairs. As soon as those were done, she could leave this "planet", or so she hoped. It was still inexplicable to her how she'd arrived here in the first place.

But just a few seconds ago, she'd seen the figure of an old nemesis, Ridley, and she intended to deal with that monster if it tried to come anywhere near her. Her arm cannon was ready to fire and her combat visor was switched on for any possible danger.

Her suit radar alerted her just two seconds before it happened, yet somehow she managed to avoid getting crushed. Just as Ridley appeared from the trees above her and swooped down to smash her, she'd somehow found the time to jump out the way, flip, and fire a missile straight into Ridley's chest. She landed on her feet and one hand. She looked straight at the recovering dragon with burning eyes; now would be the time.

Ridley roared, fire erupting from his mouth. The real version of this dragon had been through a huge ordeal of pain, and had been recreated several times. Yet in this world, Ridley appeared as biologically healthy as any other creature.

Samus fired five shots before ducking below Ridley's fire. The dragon swooped its tail in an attempt to pin Samus down, but it missed. The hunter rolled into a morph ball and rolled beneath Ridley and returned to her human form on the other side of the dragon. She fired another missile towards the monster's back before running. Ridley quickly recovered from the blow and leaped after her, wings spread and claws outstretched. Samus rolled to the ground as the dragon passed over her. She got back up as the monster landed and she jumped onto its back, wrapping her free arm over Ridley's neck.

Her weight caused Ridley to collapse. With her arm still latched onto Ridley's neck, Samus placed her arm cannon right in the beast's mouth and fired another missile. She let go as Ridley roared in pain. Samus got to her feet fast, but Ridley was already in the process of flying away. The Hunter watched him go unhappily, but satisfied that she'd just scared away her nemesis without taking a scratch.

[][]

_Ship status update: Outer hull and armor successfully repaired. Beginning quarantine filtration for outside bacteria. Alert; Chozo-based engines malfunctioning. Flight capability disabled under current damage. Replacement recommended._

Samus listened to her gunship's report and a frown came on her face; where was she to find Chozo technology, let alone the right parts to create new engines for her ship?

Then she remembered where she was. This was Tallon IV! The Chozo Ruins had plenty of little bits of technology running back there! If she could get there, maybe the gunship could indeed get a replacement! It wouldn't be as promising as Elysia's tech, but it would work!

She dialed a few commands for the ship to continue its filtration program and to repair whatever still could be used again. She searched the database for the old logs on Tallon IV. Sure enough, the geography logs were still there. She pulled up Tallon IV and singled out the gateways that would take her to the Chozo Ruins. As soon as she had the coordinates, she started walking.

The Pirate Battleship in the Tallon Overworld, stuck in the jungle, was implanted with explosives by the same being that had wiped out all the pirates. The entity walked away with a slow steady pace until the charges detonated. One by one, they went off. The crashed battleship was falling apart, piece after piece. This ship was done for. But there were still others…

One of those Pirate Battleships had crashlanded in the Chozo Ruins. The Pirates here has somehow managed to pilot their ship better and actually land their Battleship, even if it was in the middle of ruins, but what other choice did they have?

With their ship intact, they could set up defenses against the planet's amazingly hostile lifeforms. Ing had appeared, along with many other disturbing creatures, but this group of about 200 pirates had somehow managed to not only survive, but beat the crap out of all attackers. But now two entities were headed for them; the metallic monster that had just destroyed the pirates at Tallon IV's overworld, and Hunter Samus Aran.

Samus arrived first. The chozo elevator landed in the Chozo ruins and she slowly walked in. For some reason she felt the need to monitor her suit functions before she entered a fight. She was disappointed in the loss of her PED suit, but it wouldn't be useful anyway; her body was completely free of Phazon, and it would be no use now.

The Chozo Ruins were exactly as she remembered them. Nothing had changed at all. She found herself walking through familiar hallways and had little trouble finding the sites she knew had decent structures that she could use to find parts for her ship.

She opened another door to walk straight into a clearing in the ruins. The place was a bit of a mess. She could see chunks of metal and rock littered over the ground, and noticed that it followed a straight line. She followed the large trail and eventually spotted the Pirate Battleship, minimal damage and largely intact. This trail had been its quickly plotted emergency landing.

Samus got lower to the ground as she got closer to the Battleship. She eventually got close enough to look over the rock obstacles and see that the pirates had created a defensive system, with automated turrets post in a wide circle around the ship, bunkers buried in the ground for shelter, and even worse, the Battleship's guns were still functioning.

Samus closed her eyes; this would be a bit more challenging than walking in and shooting, but she'd gone through harder trials before. This would be no different.

[][]

The security turrets twisted a few times a minute, scanning their portion of the perimeter for wildlife or any approaching threats. Among the three blasters mounted on its 'head', a security camera observed and recorded everything the turret could see. The clips were sent to the Battleship, where a pirate would watch every second of every clip.

The sound of movement came from up the hill. The turret whirled around and made several clicks and whirls as the camera and targeting screen focused up the hill. Something was moving up there…

It moved faster, and the turret fired. The blast erupted dirt and stone from the ground, a small landslide tumbling down the hill and past the turret. The turret continued to search the hill and then the rubble; nothing was moving. After a full minute or surveillance, the turret returned to a neutral position. But underneath it, the rubble moved as a Morph Ball came rolling out and quietly moved out of sight.

[][]

Samus rolled as an insignificant little ball past all the pirate defenses and then found her way to one of the many ramps entering the Pirate Battleship. She returned to the Varia Suit and snuck up the ramp as quietly as possible. Once she was inside, the familiar dim light and metallic echoes surrounded her.

Samus moved quickly and quietly through the battleship, avoiding all alarm systems, security cameras, and pirates. She worked her way into the ventilation system and easily reached the command bridge. She quietly exited the vent and took aim at the central pirate, sitting in front of all the video screens.

Suddenly, the alarm went off. It startled Samus as much as it did the five pirates in the command bridge. She rolled into a Morph ball and hid beneath a chair, but the alarm wasn't for her.

[][]

A Pirate Commando ran up to the perimeter wall, two turrets beside him. Both where aimed in the same direction, towards the same lumbering figure that slowly marched towards them. Twenty more pirates arrived to back up the Commando. Two bunkers unfolded and provided them more protection, and about fifteen of the Battleship's guns pointed towards the new arrival.

The Commando roared, and the two turrets fired, and only the two turrets. They fired two blasts to blast the ground in front of the enemy as a warning, but the monster kept coming. The Pirate Commando shrugged. He roared again, and the pirates around him opened fire, joining the turrets. This time they were aimed at the metal monster's center, but the blasts seemed to bounce off. The Commando grew desperate and called for the Battleship batteries to open fire. The huge barrels unleashed their fury upon the visitor. For a moment, there was nothing but smoke and dust. But when it cleared, the visitor still stood, in its brute form, and then it spoke.

"This turn of events is insignificant. I'll show you what I mean; OBSERVE!!!" Hunter Ghor, in his armorsuit, allowed his suit's huge metallic arms to change. As soon as they were finished, he opened fire. Instantly, the twenty pirates were destroyed. The two turrets were turned to dust and the Pirate Commando was impaled by the shards of the shattered bunkers.

The Pirate Battleship opened fire again. Ghor deflected all the shots he could and the returned the favor. The batteries on the Battleship began to take damage.

Inside, Samus realized she wasn't the one the pirates were freaking out about. She unrolled and returned to her standard form, which all five pirates jumped at. She fired five simple shots and killed them all. She ran up to the glass of the command bridge to see Hunter Ghor in his huge armorsuit, marching into the Pirate base and killing any and all pirates that got in his way.

Samus reflected on the last time she had seen Ghor; he had been corrupted by Phazon and was working with Dark Samus and the Space Pirates. If he was fighting them now, in this reality, what could it mean? And besides, there was no more phazon, right? It was very likely that Ghor could be an ally in this world…

She walked to the computer screen and turned off the Battleship's weapon systems. Outside, the guns stopped firing and shut down. Ghor looked up at the command bridge and his enhanced sight allowed him to see Samus in the bridge. He laughed to himself, a terrifying sound when he was in his armorsuit. "Just in time.."

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**Thanks for your patience, I apologize for taking so long… I hope this chapter was satisfactory. Review if you wish! I value your opinion!**


	5. Heat

**Down to the story… Time for work.**

* * *

_Pirate Logs; entry 1: Arrival._

_We Space Pirates have been through a confusing ordeal; we left our planet to serve our glorious leader Dark Samus, yet now that she and her home planet have vanished, we've somehow arrived on a planet that's ridiculously far away. Our Battleships have all but vanished, and if the other ships have survived, we have no contact with them. It's almost as if we were teleported to our location on Bryyo, because the Bryyo we know is too far away from us to have reached simply by chasing the Hunter into the nebula that was once Phazon's origin planet. Now we are on Bryyo, and it makes absolutely no sense. Even worse, many creatures that should not exist here do. Troops have reported seeing lifeforms that lived on many planets but would regularly be unable to live in Bryyo's environment._

_3 days have past now and the rebuilding process has begun; troops have created relatively sturdy shelters out of the battleship's remains and Bryyo's ruins. Defense has yet to be constructed. Hopefully soon some of the more experienced troops can leave and gather resources before we run out of rations. Our SOS burns brightly and the transmission is sending out our signal for assistance 24/7, but it is unlikely any help will find us if we don't even know where we are._

The Golden-Armored Space Pirate, operating number 67531 SL, often nicknamed Trigger AM by his workers, finished logging in his Pirate crew's first day on Bryyo, or what looked like Bryyo. Their battleship had taken major damage but repairs were underway. Enough pirates had survived that they'd have twice as many arms as needed to fly the ship properly. Their only problem was biological to themselves and causing their Battleship and equipment power difficulties; they'd lost their phazon.

Their Battleships, rifles, and even biological enhancements worked solely on Phazon. The results of the defeated Phazon were weakened Pirates. Even Trigger AM had been having extreme exhaustion and massive dizziness and headaches, but he would not allow anyone to see that. He didn't get to his current rank by slacking off, and he wouldn't start now.

Needless to say, work needed to be done whether they had their special gift or not. And they didn't have it, so they just needed to tough it out. Trigger would guide them through this, as he had through many other ordeals…

[][][][]

Samus had her hand on her armcannon, aimed directly at Ghor's forehead. The two were standing a good ten yards apart yet they could see each other and their features perfectly, eyeing each other carefully. Finally Ghor moved first and lowered his huge mechanical arms, which folded back into large hooks, as his suit's torso plating lowered and the real Ghor stepped out, metal body thin and streamline. The robot stared into Samus's helmet and finally spoke, his voice returned to normal now that he was out of his battlesuit.

"Bounty Hunter Samus Aran. Fascinating…"

Samus didn't move. Ghor continued.

"Right, you don't talk too much…" He struggled for some way to have a productive one-way conversation, which sounded rather redundant.

In the meantime, Samus had pulled up her scanning visor and searched Ghor; nothing seemed to be wrong, much like the logs referring to their first meet, before his corruption or their encounter with Dark Samus on Norion that corrupted them all in the first place. It was possible that this Phazon-dreamland had created Ghor purely… Possible…

Ghor finally gave up and left the conversation, walking back to his battlesuit, gearing up, and stomping away. He left saying, "I'm going to find whatever Space Pirates are left. If you recall, they're the source of most of our problems. What is the logic of leaving them alive? Proceed quickly to your goal. Go on, get out of here!"

With that, Ghor fired something small and fast towards the Pirates' downed Battleship. Samus noticed it to be a sort of sticky grenade. She backed up as fast as she could and hid behind a sturdy rock as the ship exploded. Ghor stomped away proudly.

[][][][]

Aran found the parts for her Gunship surprisingly close to the Pirate Battleship ruins. She latched the supplies onto her suit, which fit fairly well, and began the walk back to her ship.

On the other side of the Chozo Ruins, Ghor stormed quickly through the ancient buildings. Tallon Overworld and the Chozo Ruins were now Pirate-free, and now he was headed for Magmoor Caverns.

Samus installed the Chozo technology into the Gunship, used her high-temperature beam to weld whatever needed welding down there, and finally allowed her Gunship to reactivate. It took a moment or two, but the Gunship flipped over, landed on its legs, and extended the boarding plate. Samus walked proudly onto the plate and it retracted back into the cockpit. As her missiles reloaded and her suit recovered from any damage on her trip, she planned a new course; up. Out of here. Away. Space. Cold Space.

The Hunter-Class Gunship unfolded, its wings retracting back into their flight position. The Gunship's engines roared cheerfully and the orange ship began to fly upwards.

[][][][]

The sky was amazingly cloudy for Tallon IV as Samus's ship tore right through them. There was a lot of shaking all of a sudden. The ship wasn't taking damage, but their course was changing, as if some supernatural force wasn't allowing them to leave Tallon IV. The ship's coordinates began changing and the numbers in the cockpit danced, suddenly displaying that the ship was headed back for the surface. Samus almost growled and directed her ship to fly back up, but it wouldn't let her. The Phazon clouds, the semi-conscious thought patterns of the Phazon cloud would not let her leave.

The clouds were still dark and rumbling, and Samus shot right back out of them, still beneath them, only this time between Tallon Overworld and the Magmoor Caverns. Samus had no intention of returning there, although her gunship's scans reported Ghor active there, terrorizing the Pirates that had crashed there.

It was true. The Pirate Battleship that had crashed here had been halfsubmerbed into the lava. The pirates that weren't immediately boiled did everything possible to get out, but very few did.

The crash had been most eventful; the trajectory had been helpless and the lava began to flood into the ship. Without the Phazon enhances and power, half of the doors wouldn't open, trapping Space Pirates into their stations until the lava boiled them. Those who were lucky enough to have open doors had to race out to the stern of the ship, where the empty chambers once containing Phazon supplies were their only way out. A large amount of them got caught along the way as shards of metal fell apart at the initial crash and killed, wounded, or trapped pirates from getting out. Only a good three dozen space pirates had survived the entire event, and now Ghor's metallic battlesuit was terrorizing them. The first two pirates had been snatched from the ground and tossed into the lava, and the next two were jabbed by Ghor's hooks. Ghor's right arm folded into a blade and swiped three pirates instantly while the other arm blocked the Pirates' shooting.

The battle was still going, although it wouldn't for long, as Samus passed by overhead. Ghor almost laughed, but was a bit busy.

Up in the dark sky, Samus's gunship detected yet another significant being in their area, only it was in flight and moving fast towards them. Samus looked through the cockpit's glass to see Ridley flying at top speed straight towards them.

Samus slammed her hand on the gunship's directional panel. The Gunship swerved to the right as Ridley passed right by the left with, roaring and fire raging from his mouth. The Gunship spun back around to start chasing Ridley, but the dragon was already expecting this and flew upwards. As soon as he gained enough altitude, he stopped flapping his wings and dropped, landing on the Gunship as it flew at high speed. Ridley clawed into the ship's hull to keep from being swept off, but Samus didn't like this cling-on very much. She executed a barrel roll, and it was just enough to knock Ridley off. The two leveled out at the same time and Samus flew back for another turn as her gunship's wings and she opened fire. Five missiles launched from her arsenal and closed in on Ridley.

The first two missiles missed, the second two had to be dodged. Ridley shot fireballs at the fifth and sixth ones but didn't expect the seventh. It rammed right into Ridley's chest, sending him plunging down to the Magmoor pits. But the dragon regained stability far before the drop was even halfway done. They were a good mile in the air anyway. Samus passed the dragon once again and moved for a second shot. Ridley chose to move this time by launching fireballs at the ship before it had the chance to open fire. Samus spun out of the way in time, but Ridley jumped onto the ship again, glaring and roaring into the cockpit, where he knew Samus could see him.

She returned the insult by turning a protective shield of metal around the cockpit, blocking the ugly dragon from sight. Ridley roared and swiped at the ship's right wing, knocking it off its flight pattern. The right wing malfunctioned and had it not been in firing position, it would have exploded right then and there. But instead, its entire cluster of missiles fired straight into the nearest volcano. The explosions ravaged all of the Magmoor Caverns, and even Ghor feared for his life down a mile below.

Samus used the ship's damaged trajectory to her advantage. The metal shield around her cockpit retracted and she accelerated, pinning Ridley to the glass. She tilted to the left just a notch, but it was enough to get Ridley on the left wing. At that moment they passed the volcano, grinding Ridley's right arm and shoulder against the rock. Needless to say, the pain was more than enough to force the dragon to let go. The monster began the long roll down the slanted volcano. Samus's Gunship turned around for one third and final shot; all the left wing's missiles were released consecutively.

BANG! Ridley disappeared in the black smoke as rock from the awakening volcano was launched off the volcano and plunged down into the lava. Ridley was still inside the smoke cloud, attempting to breathe through the black smoke. But the volcano was already awakening, and it was ready to erupt!

Samus was ready to get out, but she remembered Ghor below. Even in that huge suit, Ghor couldn't withstand lava, and his boosters wouldn't be able to get him out of range in time. Samus had to get him out somehow…

The Ship Grapple was the key.

Ghor received a silent transmission from Samus's ship. It read _Hold on tight._ Ghor turned around and saw Samus's Ship coming in fast. The Ship Grapple was glowing, and she passed by at the right angle so he could see what her plan was. The volcano began to erupt, engulfing half the region in lava. Ghor smirked and knew there was no other option. He readied his suit for the next take and began to run, exposing his back to Samus's ship. Samus came by for the move, and Ghor couldn't help but shout "Catch!"

The Ship Grapple was weak at first, but managed to hold onto Ghor's back. As soon as there was a sturdy grip, Samus pulled up, lifting Ghor off the ground and away from the lava. The remains of the Pirate Battleship were submerged and the one Pirate Ghor hadn't killed yet was boiled instantly as well.

Ridley's fate was unknown, but very easily suggested.

[][][][]

The Ship Grapple didn't last long, as it hadn't had time to enforce its grip on Ghor's suit. The link broke only seconds after it had been engaged, but it was enough to save Ghor's life. He dropped to the cold floor and allowed himself to roll. His bodysuit had taken minimal damage. Samus landed not too far away in a clearing, allowing her ship to start autorepairs, as she lowered down from the ship and slowly walked towards Ghor's rising form.

The metallic hunter got on his feet, emerged from his body suit, and began to laugh, an odd sound. Samus nodded.

"Well done, Aran. I am in your debt, until I save your life. That should be soon, anyway."

Samus turned to face the volcano. While it was farther away now and at a safe distance, it was amazingly bright and hot. Aran didn't spend much time gazing and turned back to Ghor, who was fixing a small spot on his bodysuit. Ghor calculated the distance to Phendrana Drifts.

"I'm headed to a cold place now, Pirates have landed in that portion of the planet. It should be the last region as well. Would you assist me in the ambushing of these Pirates? They are quite challenging and have not only survived, but have constructed defenses."

Samus closed her eyes… Phendrana Drifts… It had been a while since she'd gone there… She almost missed it. It had the same peaceful feeling as Elysia. She nodded solemnly. Ghor smiled, or so it looked to be on his metal face. "Good. It's my understanding that you've visited that region before. This should be eventful for us all, including you."

Samus would only need to find missiles for here ship and then she'd be ready to go. Ghor was an ally, and a feisty powerful one at that. What could stand in their way?

* * *

**I apologize for taking so long, but then everyone says that nowadays. I started playing Prime 3 again for no reason and was fueled to write again, and I enjoyed it! Hopefully I'll get into the habit of writing faster, too. Thanks for reading.**


	6. Phendrana

**Playing the games really does provide inspiration…**

* * *

_Pirate Logs; entry 2: Settlement._

_As the days go on, we Pirates have managed to build an effective perimeter around our Battleship. Bryyo's fuel gel has been most effective and gave us instant energy and power. Earlier this morning two Ing creatures had arrived and attempted to break down our defenses. They failed; we succeeded and killed them both. Our walls have been most powerful and the Ing are only a taste of what our soldiers can do now._

_Better yet, this means we can begin hunting. With rations running low, wildlife is the only source of food we have left. Our only concern rests with the other Pirate Battleships, as they have made no appearance and don't seem to have left any debris either. They simply vanished…_

Trigger AM completed the second Pirate Log and stalked off to patrol the perimeter wall. The pirates had connected all of the turrets to a central generator and the web of cables was protected by shards of the Battleship that had been discarded. Inside the Battleship itself, Pirates were working on clearing out debris and getting rid of all the pirates that had died during the crash.

[][][]

Phendrana Drifts.

The snowy land of Tallon IV, amazingly flourished with peaceful wildlife and few carnivorous predators. The snow was falling fresh today and one tiny ball was rolling across the snow-covered plain.

This Morph Ball, obviously Samus, was covered in a shell provided by Ghor that made he nearly invisible to all electronic surveillance, and she needed it, because there were hidden Pirate Cameras everywhere as the Pirate Battleship that had crashed here was close enough that the pirates who survived felt the need to know if anything would sneak up on them. Of course, they also weren't expecting Samus Aran.

The Hunter rolled across the snowfield and entered a cave, where she shattered the shell covering her with a Morph bomb and returned to her Varia Suit. The cave was empty and her suit reported amazingly cold temperatures. Her airtight suit kept her from freezing, but she still felt the cold just outside that layer of metal.

That noted, her scanning visor was pulled up and she managed to find weak points in the cave that could be shattered by either a Morph bomb or her high-temp cannon. Using both at particular points, she created a gap in the cave wall big enough for her Morph Ball to pass through.

Silently she rolled through the rock wall and practically through the mountain until she reached a clearing. There was a lot more ice here, but nothing she could get past. She stopped blasting the ice apart the instant she spotted metal latched onto the cave walls. She scanned it and discovered them as motion sensors, recently placed by pirate-drones.

Aran chose to stop blasting the ice apart and look for another way through, but she'd already stepped too far.

The motion-trackers beeped loudly, three red light drifted towards Aran's helmet, and gunfire echoed through the cave. Samus dove to the side and blasted one of the two motion trackers as she did. The far end of the cave seemed to open as a concealed door made way for three Pirate Commandos. All three had lasers emitting from their rifles and all three were firing a full power.

The hunter rolled again and dodged three blasts gracefully. She pushed herself off the ground and landed perfectly on her feet, firing a single shot into the first Pirate's head. Her x-ray visor allowed her to make pinpoint shots that would defeat each pirate with as few shots as possible.

The second and third pirates stepped back and one of them pulled out a second gun, making up for the lost pirate. The other tossed a pulsing grenade towards the hunter. Samus back-flipped just as the grenade shattered the ice in the cave, sending shards in both directions, but no one was hurt by it.

Aran fired another high-temperature beam at the two pirates, hitting one of them in the leg and temporarily giving her relief from half the gunfire. She used that leverage to shoot the third pirate without any trouble.

The wounded pirate wasn't done yet, though; he was still able to pull two triggers. But Aran grew tired of this fight, snapped an icicle off the cave ceiling, jumped into the air and over the pirate, and threw the icicle into her enemy's back. She walked away without a scratch.

[][][]

The Pirate Stronghold that had been here in the Phendrana Drifts when Samus had first arrived here was still intact, but it had been completely emptied. Her guess was that the newly arrived Pirates had remembered their old base here and had made use of the resources.

It didn't matter much. She'd gotten through this pirate base once before when they were still in full control of it, she didn't expect much more resistance this time, especially since they were rather lost and leaderless. Samus found herself a bit more confident by this knowledge, not that she hadn't already been confident with the plan she and Ghor had come up with anyway.

Phendrana Drifts was a hostile and dangerous landscape, and the Pirates had the advantage of having a base already set up to house them and keep them safe from the freezing cold and hostile wildlife. The Pirates had also found that their Battleship's power supply could be transferred to the base power lines, which now energized the entire base, while also being able to create more power. If left alone, the group of pirates could easily power up their battleship and even create another effective stronghold here.

Samus and Ghor intended to crush the pirates, but the Pirates had already created a massive shield that protected them from his brute strength. Samus's first objective was to take that shield down from the inside.

Said hunter reached the concealed door at the end of the door and began looking for a way to through. It was heavily shielded and wasn't opened like most doors, but by a biological scanner. Samus wasn't permitted in.

But since when did that ever stop her?

She backed up and activated the x-ray visor. The door composed of four large plates that moved in a specific yet simple pattern to open. The fifth and sixth plated were painted to resemble ice and could probably be shattered once the four real doors were out of place.

Samus's eyes followed the pipes and cables that allowed the door to move. Keeping her arm cannon at a high frequency, she fired accordingly and the first metal slate slid back.

Samus repeated the simple steps three more times until all four slates were out of the way. Then she kicked the two painted doors in with all her might. As she'd expected, they fell apart easily. She was now inside the base, and inside the giant shield.

The hunter walked slowly and cautiously through the empty cold halls of the Pirate base. Somehow she wasn't convinced that they'd allow her to enter the base with so little a fight. Yet as she quietly walked through each room, no resistance appeared.

Finally she reached a room in which the pirates had once held different species for experimentation, and she spotted a deceased specimen of a creature she knew and hated, Metroids.

The dead Metroid had been killed by the freezing temperatures of Phendrana Drifts and lay frozen on the ground. Samus kneeled down to examine its features. It had laid here to die and had ice forming from its entire body, a good inch or so covering it entirely.

Gunshots erupted in the room and bolts of energy sizzled over Samus's helmet. Another three bolts shot lower to the ground, one of them hitting the deceased Metroid and shattering it. Samus jumped and slid behind a lab computer for cover.

On the other side of the room, five Space Pirates had arrived to search the area and decide it was ready for a clean-up and eventually to reuse the station. But if Samus was here, this station wouldn't be ready for use. The hunter stood up for a split second and fired three shots, shattering the head armor and later the skull of one of the pirates. She got back down as the other four returned fire. She managed to peek at her attackers. Three of the four were standard soldiers and one commando was guiding them. Aran readied her missile launcher, not one, but five. A Chozo upgrade that allowed her to fire up to five missiles at once was ready to be put to effective use.

As she got up and ran to a different bit of shelter, she managed to lock on to all four pirates. She fired and slid to a stop. The first three missiles hit home, reaching their given pirate in the head, chest, and neck. Each one flung backwards from the explosion as they turned to ice and shattered as they hit the wall or floor. The commando, however, had enough reaction time to leap out of the way as the missile hit and froze the wall behind him. He hit the floor, rolled, and fired a good number of shots at Samus.

One of the bolts of energy struck dead home on Samus's arm cannon. While she resumed firing, the gun malfunctioned and lost the ability to fire high-temperature beams. Now they were simply high-frequency and bare energy, but nothing more.

One of the high-frequency beams tore right through the commando's head and down his neck and out his spine. The stand-off was over.

Aran walked through two more rooms and then located the power generator.

Scan: _Target is an unstable high-voltage generator capable of powering an entire planet when built and maintained correctly. Subject has not been, and so remains extremely dangerous. Caution and distance are recommended._

Like that scared Samus in any way. The first thing she did was walk towards it. Her x-ray scans proved useful and she found where most of the power flowed from the inner workings. She found the core, electrical wiring, and better yet, the liquid nitrogen keeping it from overheating.

So she walked around it and blasted the coded screen with a high-frequency beam. With her grappling beam she tore off the control panel and reached for the two large pipes of liquid nitrogen. She pulled them out as hard as she could and then let them fall onto the ground and shatter. Most of the chemical turned to gas as soon as it was released. Aran walked away, expecting a reaction soon enough.

She didn't have to wait very long. She hadn't even left the room when the alarm started to sound off. The room she was in contained three doors; one she had entered from, the exit she was taking and a locked third door. From the two latter doors entered five pirates entering to fix the machine. The Hunter thought differently and shot three in the face. The two others took refuge behind the generator, and Samus simply kept firing just to scare them. She knew they wouldn't last long.

After a good minute of the machine catching fire and Samus making purposely terrible shots, she exited the room at full speed. The last two pirates had three seconds only to wonder why before the generator exploded. Both pirates were thrown across the room and then showered by debris, and finally engulfed in flames. Samus, who was still running, fell to the floor and the wall and door behind her shattered and passed over her. It was a miracle she wasn't crushed, but the energy, heat, and power contained in the machine did end up zapping her. The power overload blew several circuits in her right left hand, disabling her grapples beam. No more grappling.

[][][]

Ghor watched the explosion from the ice outside the Drifts. The shield disabled as it happened, clearing the way for him. Phase One was complete. Now it was Ghor's turn.

The large Mechanical Hunter rolled into the base and smashed into the nearest wall. Two Pirates were instantly killed.

Ghor unlatched the metal hooks on his suit's huge arms and swung them across the large room. They smashed into the large computers and debris rained onto the floor. Electricity began surging through the circuits and blowing apart each light and elevator system, not to mention traveling across Ghor mechanical suit, but it caused him no harm. Instead, it made him more dangerous. It was time for chaos.

[][][]

The supposedly female computer on the intercom began repeating 'security breach' and other alien terms that likely indicated that Ghor and Samus were here.

Samus got up and shook her left hand, which was sparking and started to burn a bit. She could deal with that later, but right now she had more pressing matters. She was on a time table.

She ran through the half-existent hallway and blasted through the already damaged door in her path, only to find herself confronted by two simple pirates. She'd been expecting more of a problem. She merely fired at one and then grabbed the other by its arm, twisting it, and slamming its head against the wall. Both were dead. Moving on…

Samus jumped through a broken window and found herself in the docking bay. She wasn't too far from the Pirate Battleship that had landed here. She needed to get in that ship and damage the engines, firing mechanisms, and anything else that would make the ship more unstable, before Ghor got there. They had very little time before the Pirates would be able to solidify defenses.

Aran jumped past a mechanized turret and grabbed a small case of explosives. She rounded the corner and found a squadron of Pirate running towards Ghor's position. They saw her and instinctively took aim, but she had already moved first by throwing the explosives. They opened fired and ended up killing themselves.

Aran found the ship and ran inside. Two turrets shot at her but were easily avoided. Samus ran into the cramped hallways of the ship's inner workings. She rolled into the Morph Ball and took the vent shaft down into the engine room. She shattered all the cooling systems and turned every system on. She put them at full blast. On the outside, a Pirate had been standing in front of the engines and was burned to a crisp.

Samus traveled back up the ship and managed to find a series of generators that supplied power to all the of ship's weapons. Phazon was gone, so they Pirates had found an alternative. Samus increased the power outage from the usual 27% to 89%, as high as she could put it before a Pirate tossed a grenade her way. She reached down and threw it back, but it blew them both out of the room in opposite directions. Samus entered her Morph Ball and rolled away to safety. She had betters things to do with her time.

She reached the command bridge. There were three pirates here. She locked the first one under a seat, shot the second one's legs to immobilize him and jumped to the third and broke his arm. All three were alive and she wanted them that way to see her defeat them. She was feeling violent today.

She routed all the power from the nonessential systems to the engine room and weapons generator. All four of them could already hear the violent humming as the ship began to burn from the backside and every gun on the ship was glowing. She walked out of the command bridge and returned a minute later with a huge crate of explosives. She dragged it into the cockpit and then looted the grenades from all three pirates' packs. She tossed them all on the explosives and then sat there, waiting.

[][][]

Ghor tore out of the docking bay and his eyes landed on the Battleship. He laughed, a horrific sound in his suit. His enhanced vision spotted Samus idle in the command bridge. He shouted, "Get out of there!" in his loud voice. Samus turned around and raised her eyebrows. He'd gotten here sooner than expected. Behind her, the pirate with two broken legs managed to ready his rifle and shot her in the back. One of her back's jetpacks malfunctioned and she was thrown forward out of the command bridge. She fell through the glass and landed painfully not too far from Ghor. One way or another, she'd gotten out. Ghor smiled.

"Let's do this." He shot one large flare into the command bridge and a missile to the back of the ship. Both explosions lit up instantly as the explosives, engines, and later weapons all reached their peak of fire and ignited. Samus and ghor felt the heat and saw the light brighter and hotter than anything they'd ever experienced.

Boom…

[][][]

The Pirate Stronghold at Phendrana Drifts was gone. That's all there could be said. Sure, some pirates were probably still alive, but they were going to die eventually by some hazard in the base. One pirate had found his leg buried in debris. He began freeing himself only to cause a larger chunk to come crushing down on his head. Another pirate's joints had been welded together by the explosion's heat. Three pirates fell into the docking bay and one of the small pirate fighters had fallen right between them. A single missile inside the ship caused it to explode, and killed all three. Altogether, the pirates were going to die. From the debris, Ghor and Samus Aran, both covered in soot and ash and somewhat burnt, emerged victorious. Sore, tired, a bit deaf, but victorious.

* * *

**I wanted to finish this before I left. I'll leaving for some time, my Summer Vacation. I may end up writing some of the story there, but seeing how slowly this is going, the next chapter could be a while. Thanks for reading, hope you liked it!**


	7. Into the Mines!

**As a tribute to the date that Other M is released, I figured it was due time I updated this story. Thanks for sticking around and being patient! I apologize. I have no excuse.**

* * *

_Pirate Logs; entry 3: Industrialization._

_Our small civilization at Bryyo continues to grow as we make effective use of all Bryyo's technology. The Fuel Gel here is especially pure and efficient, and hunting has given us productive results. We may not only survive here, we can live, at least until we manage to rebuild our ships, which may take time. But the process has begun. A new SOS beacon is transmitting and we expect someone to hear it soon enough. But we can wait. We are doing well._

Trigger AM told no lies; his group of roughly 70 pirates was doing extremely well. It was almost too good to be true, but Bryyo was an amazingly helpful planet during their time of need.

* * *

Samus sat on an elevator shaft that was dropping quickly towards the Phazon Mines, which had once been a Space Pirate stronghold before Samus destroyed the majority of the pirates here long ago. Samus was attempting to rewire her left hand's ability to use any form of grapple of lasso at all, but she was unsuccessful. The silver coloring of her hand's upgrades had already faded and had become the standard color of the Chozo Suit.

Beside her, on the center of the elevator, stood Ghor's mechanical suit, the much more nimble form of Ghor standing on its side, performing quick maintenance on the suit's right arm. Both still had a bit of ash on them from the explosion at Phendrana, where they had just demolished an entire base of Pirates and any remaining troops there in a matter of seven minutes and thirty seven seconds. Their next and last stop was the Phazon Mines, the last pirate-infested location on Tallon IV.

The lift doors swung open and Samus raised her gun to fire at any enemy in sight, but none appeared. Ghor calmly entered his mechanical suit, most of the repairs complete. The two slowly entered the Phazon Mines, the grim grey aura of the stale and mechanical pirate world even worse than the last time Samus had been here.

The two hunters reached the center of the large site, a metal crane above them covered in rust after years of no use or maintenance. Samus looked carefully around the site, looking for any motion of any kind. Ghor scanned the area for any heat signatures or life readings. He recorded several, and instantly after his discovery, both of them heard a metal creaking sound.

Samus raised her gun higher and looked frantically for the source of the noise. Instead, a large click sounded off in the site and the metal crane above them began to fall. Samus would have died in that instant, but the crane stopped inches from her face as Ghor lifted his arms to catch it. Ghor's suit fell two or three feet into the ground as the crane's weight came down on him. He raised his arms a little higher as he started to lift the crane. Samus took the opportunity to look up and see three Pirates aero troopers hovering above the crane's latch systems. She opened fire and shot one of them down instantly. It crashed into the other, which came down to the ground with an explosion. The third flew up and out of Samus's range, calling for more pirates.

A swarm of thirty pirate troopers appeared from around the mining site and opened fire. Samus rolled out of harm's way while Ghor, still fighting against the heavy crane pushing him down, took most of the damage. Samus shot at any pirates she could see, but she wasn't doing enough to help Ghor's situation much. Her x-ray visor instead told her the majority of the pirate attackers were stationed near the crane controls. She ran past crates of mining supplies and began to climb a maintenance ladder up to the crane's arm. All five pirates that shot all her were killed instantly.

She reached the top and carefully walked across the crane arm until she reached the dome that served as the central controls. Ten pirates were stationed there shooting at Ghor's metal body, and therefore being a problem. Samus locked on to five with her missiles and released them two seconds later. They died instantly and the smoke confused the remaining five. Samus jumped in, shot two at point blank range, dodged the next three incoming shots, rolled to the side, tackled the third pirate, and used him as a shield. As soon as the pirate died, she killed the last two without any trouble. Then she relieved Ghor of the opposing crane.

The remaining pirates now opened fire on Samus, relieving Ghor of the damage they were causing. The crane, now limp and free, was Ghor's new tool. He grabbed the crane's claw and chucked it at the remaining pirates. The crane caused more damage that any missile ever could. The pirates were crushed. The last two pirates in the area retreated.

Samus leaped down from the crane controls and gave Ghor a concerned look. Ghor's suit was burned and somewhat falling apart. Ghor knew this too.

"Ignore my current state, Samus," Ghor said, waving a mechanical arm, with blew several sparks as he did so. "My condition does not change our mission. We must press on." He took a good look around the site.

"I recommend you travel through the smaller hallways of the mines. I will continue along the open spaces the pirates have likely planted with traps. If I cannot continue, I will shed my suit and continue without it. Now, go on ahead."

* * *

Samus ventured through the small corridors of the Phazon Mines, all the while scanning pirate panels and screens for additional information. She was collecting data that she didn't need, but some of the more recent intel uploads proved informative.

_Command 23.76.9008_

_All personnel are to report to the Elite Pirate training facility for new weaponry. The disturbances at Phendrana and Magmoor suggest hostile units approaching._

Another read as follows.

_Alert, Command 23.76.9009_

_Two mechanical are being traced in Phendrana as the same hostile forces that defeated our brothers there and at Magmoor. All personnel are to take battle stations in preparation for the enemies' arrival._

Samus pressed on through the empty corridors.

_Alarm, Command 23.76.9010_

_It is the dreaded Hunter, and she has brought an ally! All forces, fire upon the two Hunters on sight. Do not let them take the mines!_

Samus entered a larger room where the mined Phazon was to be purified if possible and readied for transport, and five Pirate soldiers awaited her. All were placed in bunkers, and the door leading to the next room was locked. A panel above the door opened and three sentry turrets extended from the wall and took aim. Samus dove behind a computer panel for cover.

* * *

Ghor clanked through the larger spaces of the mines, his right arm cannon ready to fire on sight. Sparks were shooting out of every joint in his metal suit and many of its standard features were failing every minute. Ghor commanded his suit to stop sending power to all failed additions and sent all power to the missile pods on the back of the suit, which had not yet taken damage.

As if answering to his unspoken thoughts that Pirates would soon move to ambush him, a pirate aerotrooper jumped into the air and cut a large pipe from its position along the walls of the current chamber. The pipe creaked and tipped over, heading for Ghor. The mechanical hunter caught the pipe with his left hand, which creaked a little itself, and threw the pipe back, hitting the pirate and killing it.

Ten more pirates appeared from around the chamber, drawing their weapons and firing at will. Ghor roared, a terrifying sound to hear moving against you, but the pirates would obviously not back down.

Ghor's right arm opened fire as Ghor's body spun in 360 degrees several times. Half the pirates were killed, while the remaining five got smarter and took shelter. Ghor stopped spinning and reconnecting his two body sections, and began walking towards one of the five pirates. He reached forward and snatched the terrified pirate from his position and tossed it at another shooter. Both pirates died from the impact.

The remaining three, one of them an aerotrooper, began firing heat-based weaponry. Ghor found his right arm had started to melt, but he used it to block the shots anyway. He kept shooting, eventually shattering a crate that contained Phazon, which sprayed all over the pirate hiding behind it. The pirate began to burn and died.

Ghor looked up. There was a crane up above, near the aerotrooper's positions in the air. He located the control panels and noticed how close the two were to the second pirate hiding among a jumble of crates.

His suit's condition reached 'critical' and he was ejected from the seat. His nimble but menacing body was all that remained. He growled. His suit had failed. Now he had to avenge it.

"You like fire!" He yelled angrily, his mechanical voice adding a more frightful tone to it. "Here, catch!"

His arm flashed as it plasma gun activated and a laser shot from the barrel. He overheated the crane's controls, causing the crane itself to go nuts. It hit the aerotrooper at high speed. The jetpack failed and the pirate fell to the hard ground. The crane came down to crush it.

The last pirate stared at the crane and the pirate that once stood there in awe, and somehow didn't hear Ghor running to him. The mechanical hunter grabbed the pirate by the jaw and lifted him into the air. The pirate aimed his rifle at Ghor, who in exchange took the gun and ripped it off. The pirate screamed, since the gun had been welded to the pirate's exoskeleton. Its forearm was now gone.

"You took part of me and broke it," Ghor said in a serious tone. "Now we're even." He tossed the pirate into the crates, where he would slowly die as he bled. Ghor walked away casually.

* * *

Samus fired back at the pirates for the fifth time. Two pirates had died and one sentry gun had been destroyed. The remaining five opponents did not seem to have ammunition limitations. Samus rolled into a Morph ball and rolled to a different cover, which would give her a different angle.

She returned to the Varia Suit and allowed her cannon to lock on to the two sentry guns and the only pirate she could currently see. Her missiles were released and all three targets were neutralized. The remaining two pirates, wherever they were, chose to keep quiet.

Aran stepped into the open and both pirates fired. As she heard the gunshots, she flipped out of the way and shot both in the head.

The Pirate Battleship lay twisted and bent in the center of the Phazon Mines, in an open area with no ceiling and about sixty pirates surrounding it. On one side of the large area, the entire wall had collapsed as Ghor planted explosives and got back into his suit. The machine could no longer do anything but walk forward(for whatever time its legs could hold it up) and fire the 200 missiles it had prepared. Ghor's eyes glowed red as he opened fire.

On the other side of the room, a door had opened and Samus Aran stepped through. The door locked behind her (surprise, surprise) and the division of pirates not attacking Ghor prepared to face her.

Pirates fired, Aran dodged. Ghor shot missiles, pirates died. Samus fired, pirates died. Pirates fired back, the hunters took damage.

Samus defeated her division first. Ghor was having trouble locking onto his targets and plenty of his missiles went flying towards the ship itself. Aran ran into the Battleship and started clearing out the pirates inside. She then ran outside again to help Ghor. She fired a missile at one and whacked another in the back of the head with her cannon. She shot several in the back and Ghor handled the rest. Soon enough, the pirates were all dead.

Ghor stared at another shower of sparks shooting from his left arm. He looked at his missile pack; about forty missiles remained. He stared at the ship and then began to walk forward, slowly but surely. As he did, he looked at Samus.

"Samus, my suit will not help us anymore, but this Battleship must go. Open the ship's hangar bay and allow me to walk inside. I will destroy this suit to blow it up, and we shall continue on without it."

Aran had nothing to say, as usual, and she nodded. She ran inside and activated the ship's hangar ledge. The platform lowered and Ghor's suit stepped on. Ghor himself stepped out as the hangar ledge rose back into the ship. The two hunters quietly prepared one of the forty missiles to detonate in forty seconds and destroy the rest, along with the suit, and the Pirate Battleship itself. They activated the timer and ran the hell out of there. Ghor got out first.

Samus nearly made it to the exit when a Pirate Commando appeared from the ceiling and swung down, kicking Samus in the chest and landed on her, punching her in the face all it could. Ghor ran back in and wrestled the pirate off of her. The pirate elbowed Ghor in the neck and whacked him away, returning to Samus. The Hunter flipped to her feet and fired at the pirate, who shrugged off all the hits. Samus switched to missiles, but the pirate knocked her cannon to shoot towards the wall instead. The pirate shouldered Samus into a wall and shot her cannon, attempting to break it. Samus punched the pirate in the face and kneed it between the legs. Ghor came back and tried stabbing the pirate in the back. He broke through the armor plating but did not cut into the pirate's skin. The pirate turned, grabbed Ghor with both hands, and threw him into Samus. Aran ducked and tackled the pirate and whacked it in the head with her cannon, dazing the pirate long enough so that Ghor could come back and stab it in the neck. The pirate was dead. Both hunters instantly ran out of the ship and as fast as their legs could carry them.

3, 2, 1, BANG!

The missile fired, blew up, and the remaining missiles followed in suit. The hanger bay exploded in fire, heating the engines beyond their capacity and then they blew up. The Battleship shot up into the air as half of it was swallowed in flames. As it came down, it landed on its bow, which resulted in another explosion.

* * *

The fire easily reached Samus and Ghor, and blew them both to the ground and it burned them as well. Ghor turned over, burned but functioning. Samus found her suit malfunctioning as the extra large shoulders failed and her resistance to dangerous chemicals lowered. Her failed PED suit had also taken even more damage, which directed the faults to her cannon. Her high-temperature beams were now gone. Her cannon fired standards shots once again.

So far she had lost her PED ability, her ability to walk through acidic rain, and her cannon upgrades and grapple upgrades were gone. Samus wondered if she'd lose everything by the time this was over. But wait… it was, wasn't it? Tallon IV was free of pirates! Didn't that mean their job was done?

Oh wait, they weren't on Tallon IV. They were…. Somewhere… where phazon drew the world of their memories. So it seemed now that their new objective was Samus's first one, to get out of this place.

* * *

**So Other M should be out very soon! I can't wait! Thanks again for being patient. If you do have opinions, please share them! I'm not too proud of this chapter, so if you do have a review, I'd love to hear it. Anyway, thanks for reading.**


	8. Aether's Bog

**After a far-too-long period of no updates, I decided to finish my Metroid story. I apologize for all those waiting on it. Since I'm moving on to a different… section of the story now, I chose to include the newest feature the Metroid franchise added to Samus; a voice. She'll be speaking from now on. Not too much, but enough to get a plot clear. Her thoughts may or may not be portrayed, depending on whether I find them important or not at the time.**

* * *

_Pirate's Logs; Entry 4, Fortification_

_As of today, military forces are armed and ready to fire upon any hostilities coming our way. As I look over the final additions of the protective turrets and the upcoming creation of a shield generator, I cannot help but wonder why we feel that we must have so much protection, and yet every pirate I've questioned on this matter believes that I have made the correct choice in preparing for the worst. What lies ahead, however? I desire to find out._

* * *

Bounty Hunter Samus Aran, the powerful bold figure of orange and yellow, walked along Tallon IV with her lean metallic ally, Ghor. Both of them had just cleared this false world of all Space Pirates, who had all followed Aran into a cloud of phazon dust. That said, everything but Aran and the Pirates was a regeneration of their memories, as the phazon had somehow drawn these locations and creatures out of the minds of Samus and the Pirates.

Because of this, 'Ghor' lived and walked alongside her, and Ridley had appeared as well, although the dragon had been defeated at the 'Magmoor Caverns'. The entire planet was a 'regeneration', and the last time that Samus had attempted to fly off the 'planet' she had merely been turned around without changing her flight pattern, straight back to the planet. It was as if some invisible wall had formed around the world and her flying through it only spat her back inside. It seemed the world did not want her to leave.

Whatever the case, this Delusion would not hold Samus prisoner. She had escaped death too many times and succeeded on even more occasions to be held captive by a cloud of blue dust. That's where Ghor came into play, Samus decided.

If Ghor was a delusion as much as the rest of this world, was he also a captive to the boundaries? Samus chose to test this theory, and so they were headed back to Samus's gunship to fly off into the sky and find out.

When Ghor arrived into the ship, he opted to step back outside and add weapons to the gunship. Samus had no argument; she had yet to find missiles to replace the ones she'd already lost during her chaotic landing here. As she prepared the ship for a take-off, Ghor placed very small, subtle, yet promising machines beneath the ship's hull. As he returned the ship, he mentioned to his fellow Hunter that the turrets would require a few seconds to charge before being able to open fire, an action Samus could control through the same wiring circuits that commanded her missile firing.

The gunship lifted into the air and the wings folded into flight position. The hum of the gunship was music to Samus's ears, and the engines roared characteristically. It took 4.3 seconds to depart from the ground.

The flight into the cloudy sky began and never ended. It seemed that they had passed the invisible wall, and yet had not arrived anywhere. Samus looked outside the cockpit eagerly and cautiously, and Ghor showed no emotion. Finally, they saw land.

They saw land… not what Samus was hoping for at all… But it wasn't Tallon IV! That was progress.. wasn't it?

The gunship initiated a quick scan and reported the area to be Torvus Bog.

Ugh.

Then Samus realized just how dangerous a situation they were in! Torvus Bog was a swamp area, and they were right in the middle of it!

Samus veered to the left, the entire ship turned sideways. Ghor latched on with his claw-like hands and watched as Samus avoided a rather large tree. Another one passed by and Ghor decided that it was a bit too close for his comfort. Samus swerved back upright, throwing Ghor off his grip and tumbling into the back of the ship. Aran pulled up and hoped for a clear flight to the sky; she didn't get what she wished for.

Something latched onto the ship's left wing. Samus saw if for a split second and nothing more. The jolt sent the ship spiraling back down into the swamp, crashing into the muddy water and barely missing three more large trees. The impact sent Samus flying out of her seat and into the ceiling and then back down.

When the ship finally did stop moving, it was upside down, the bottom of the hull just barely peeking out of the murky water. Aran had the engines ignite just enough to flip the ship right-side up, land properly, and then shut down. The gunship was once again out of power, but this time it just needed time to recharge.

Ghor stepped out first, his Plasma Beam at the ready, he walked into the ankle-deep murky water with somewhat disgust, but more awareness for the creature that had tackled the ship or any other that might find interest in them. Samus followed in his example, doing the same in the opposite direction. The two stood back to back for a few seconds before lowering their weapons.

Samus activated her X-ray visor and Ghor his heat vision. They quickly scanned the swamp grounds, the ship, and then the trees. Samus spotted something spider-like hanging in the trees, waiting for them. Its one large eye focused on Samus just before it unfolded its legs and charged.

"Ghor!" Samus shouted just before she jumped sideways to avoid the giant Ing. Ghor whirled around and blasted the Ing with a full blast of his Plasma Beam. The Ing was knocked down into the ankle-deep water but got up almost instantly. It swung twice at Ghor, knocking him over into the water. It pounced on his, pinning him down with two of its legs. Samus locked on to the monster's back and fired three missiles at once. The impact threw it off balance and Ghor took the opportunity to attack.

His arm unfolded into a sharp blade and he landed a solid blow on the creature's side. Ghor moved in for the kill, only to be disappointed as the Ing deteriorated into a dark cloud and fled. Ghor's blade retreated back into his arm and he brushed off the water from his torso before turning to Samus.

"What was that?" He asked rather angrily.

"A Warrior Ing," replied Samus. "They're native to a world known as Dark Aether, a copy of the real Aether planet, only shrouded in a never ending darkness."

Samus took another good look at her surroundings, and motioned to the entire swamp. "In Dark Aether, everything here; the water, the trees, the grass, the mud, even the sky, would be a darker shade of black and purple. It's where the Ing reside."

Ghor turned back to where the Warrior Ing had vanished, suddenly a little more paranoid than he usually was. "Why was it here? What did it want with us?"

Samus shook her head. "I don't know. Ing can't survive in light. Light Aether was brutal to them, they could only enter the light world as clouds of their essence. That Ing **should **not have been able to survive in this world."

_Should _not have, yet they had just proven that statement wrong by fighting with the monster. How did the Ing manage to live in a light world?

It didn't matter. Right now, they had to… What were they supposed to do now? Samus's plan to fly out of the Phazon world with Ghor alongside her had failed, so he needed some way to get out… What was there she had that could use to destroy phazon? The previous assault of Phazon was destroyed with the death of Dark Samus, the Metroid Prime, but now, that Thing was dead, so what was left to do?

Samus's pondering was interrupted by something glimmering in the water. She walked towards the object, noticing that the water was getting deeper as she continued. Ghor turned to see her reach into the water and grasp the object, a plate of metal reflecting the shattered sunlight that broke through the trees above them. Samus scanned the object.

_Metal plating is composed of an extremely durable metal once mass-produced on planet Aether. Used by the Luminoth of said planet, this alloy usually was the primary constructive material the Luminoth used to create their machines and body armor, as well as weapons and paint when melted._

Samus looked down into the water again and saw something much larger in the water nearby, unmoving and grey. Her scanning visor detected no life signs, and so she reached to move it. It was extremely heavy, so she called for Ghor to help.

The two grasped onto the object's center mass and lifted it, only to see a dead Luminoth torso emerge out of the water. Neither of the bounty hunters even flinched, but simply stared into the cold dead eyes of the being they had just heaved out of the water. They dragged it towards the shallow water until they could observe the majority of the body without being obscured by water. The Luminoth's chest armor had a small opening, the metal that Samus had found, and several scorch marks were visible throughout the armor as well, on the torso, helmet, and limbs.

_Luminoth Soldier suffered from massive cranial trauma and a broken spine. Scorched body armor suggests subject was assaulted by manufactured weapons, most likely of Space Pirate origin, due to the appearance of scorch marks usually caused by heat-based weapons._

Samus sighed. Space Pirates were here too? Was there no end to the annoyance those hostile monsters were?

A rocket of some kind flew past Samus's head and nearly hit Ghor's arm. It barely missed and hit a tree instead, exploding and consuming the entire tree in flames. Both hunters instinctively turned to face whoever had fired the rocket. They found themselves facing a band of seven Space Pirates, all of them standing just outside of the water.

The two Hunters instinctively raised their weapons in return, and for a few split seconds, they all stood staring at one another. The pirate leader decided he had the advantage in numbers and roared for an attack. His six followers divided, three headed to kill Samus as he and two others attacked Ghor, the one with a Rocket Launcher staying behind for extra help if needed.

Samus responded first, shooting one directly in the head and lunged to the side to dodge the incoming shots. She turned into a Morph Ball and rolled in the water, which was just deep enough to completely conceal her. The two pirates looking for her stood no chance. She rolled beneath the first and placed three bombs, blowing off the pirate's legs and then finishing the job. The last pirate began firing aimlessly hoping to at least get one shot off, but failed. Samus rolled behind him, returned to her Varia Suit, and whacked him with the side of her gun. She shot him in the back of the head just for good measure.

Ghor handled things a little more forceful. The nearest pirate of the three got a face full of plasma. The second was the leader, who entered a small and short duel with the mechanical hunter. Ghor ended the fight by grabbing the gun, which, with all pirates, is welded to the exoskeleton, and tore it off. The pirate roared painfully and fell into the water. Ghor took the sharp end of the exoskeleton arm and chucked it at the third pirate's torso. The seventh rocket pirate chose to fire at Ghor first, and missed. In response, Samus grabbed its neck and fired a charged shot into the pirate's skull.

Thus ended the fight.

Ghor walked over to a dead pirate and ripped off a part of its exoskeleton. He slammed his hand onto the outer shell. He downloaded the pirate's navigational system off of it and then tossed it into the water.

"These pirates are desperate, Samus." Ghor began walking north-east. "Pirates don't seem to like this bog, and so their ship should be simple enough to destroy. It is this way."

Samus followed, suddenly wondering why Ghor was so focused on destroying the pirates and why she was helping him at all. Sure, Ghor was a friend and the pirates were enemies, but Ghor wasn't real, and the pirates were just as hopeless as she was, trapped in a world of Phazon that shouldn't exist. It was only a matter of time before this world began bringing back other memories.

* * *

Their walk through Torvus Bog took them underwater for a short period of time and through the rest of the entire swamp, where they finally reached the crash site of the Pirate Battleship. What they saw was both stunning and amusing.

The Battleship had come into the swamp at an angle and had nose-dived into the water and thick mud. What parts of the nose that hadn't been crushed by the impact were covered in mud, and no doubt that section of the ship was entirely flooded. The rear end of the Battleship was being held up in the air by the strong trees that the ship had landed on. Several large trees were tipped over, and it could be seen where the ship tore into the swamp and shattered the trunks of several trees that had probably lasted hundreds of years on the real Torvus Bog. The midsection of the Battleship had taken no blow from the environment, but was no doing well. For a split second, sparks shot out of what used to be a turret. The bulb that had once glowed blue with Phazon power was now dark grey and lifeless, and had debris tearing out of it, and several dozen dents lining its rim.

Ghor stopped walking as soon as he managed to take in the whole sight and simply said, "Huh. I didn't expect it to be this easy."

He wasn't kidding. Even Samus was expecting at least defensive Pirates or preparations for attackers, but no. It seemed as if this ship had just crashed into the forest a few hours ago!

Ghor resumed his walk and extended his arm and plasma cannon. He motioned for Samus to join him. "I'm guessing the engines of this battleship will still be intact, seeing as they are suspended from the ground. The ship is tilted at a 38 degree angle, and as easy as this may be, let's make this quick. Samus, I need you to head to the front of the ship and plant an engine ignition. I will go and prepare the engines for a self-destruction as soon as the ignition takes place. As soon as I tell you to start the sequence, we'll need to get out of here. Ready?"

Samus stared at Ghor as if she was asking him the same question. Without another word, the two walked to the ship's midsection and began to climb. Ghor reached the large bulb that once housed Phazon and began to burn a hole through the metal. The process took about five minutes. Ghor retracted his cannon as his shifted back into a hand, and then tore off the slate of metal about three feet in diameter.

"Ladies first," Ghor motioned for Samus to enter the battleship. Samus rolled her eyes and leaped in, landing on the floor, which as Ghor stated was at a 38 degree slant, and she started sliding off towards the wall. She stopped herself two feet away from it as Ghor landed behind her and his metal feet dug into the floor.

"I think you can tell which direction is the right one, no?"

Samus turned to her ally. "Get your job done and we'll be out of here."

Ghor smiled, a strange sight considering his metal face. "Race you." With that, he started towards the engines, clawing through the crowded and dark metal hallways uphill towards the engines. Samus turned downhill towards the nose.

* * *

The dark hallways were gloomy, shooting out sparks, and most of them had chunks of metal, puddles of water, and dead pirates lining the walls, floor, and even the ceiling. Samus carefully stepped over a dead pirate and moved around the metal beam that had torn through one wall, impaled a pirate in the upper torso, and gone through the other. Another pirate lay with his arm completely missing. Curiosity got the best of Samus as she pulled up her visor to start scanning random parts of the hallway.

_Ashes contain traces of Space Pirate flesh. This mound of ash was likely a Space Pirate at some point, burned to near nothingness, most likely by a gas explosion._

_Metal beam has torn through the ceiling and continued down through the metal floor. Unusual heat and electrical signatures suggest it has made its way all the way down to a generator below. Avoid physical contact if possible._

_Metal wall was most likely bent out of position during the various impacts during the crash. Pirate soldier happened to be in the way during the impact and was impaled by the end of the metal shard._

_Absence of half the gas pipe suggests an explosion that vomited flame across the hallway. Any and all metals and organic material within a five foot radius of the explosion would have suffered extremely high temperature burns._

_Deformed exoskeleton of the space pirate suggests it was exposed to high temperatures. The exoskeleton likely melted and fused to the Pirate's skin. No life signs detected._

Samus had seen this sort of chaos before, but usually just after a crash. It had been some time since she and the other Pirates had crashed here in the false world, so why was this ship still so fresh will destruction? How did it still have power? She decided to take it as it was and travel as a Morph ball the rest of the way to avoid debris and get to her destination faster.

* * *

In the meantime, Ghor ended up having a much easier journey to the engines. The metal crowded hallways were still beaten and some debris had gotten in the way, but it was nothing his plasma beam couldn't melt. When he reached the end of the hallways and kicked in a broken door to allow him access to the engines, he was presented with a room filled with pirates, all of which stationed perfectly to shoot at him. By pure instinct, both of his arms formed to their respective weapons, his eyes glowed red, and his vision enhanced to show him exactly what he was up against. At the same time, the first pirate fired a rocket.

* * *

The explosion was audible throughout most of the gunship, and Samus's Gunship warned her that her ally taking gunfire. All the more reason for her to get to the bridge as fast as possible. A few morph bombs got her through most of the wreckage and she managed to follow magnetic beams and support rails to get over certain obstacles. Finally she was in the air vents, which contained nothing but burnt metal and scorched plastic beams.

The Boost Ball was helpful enough to puss her through the majority of the blockage, until she reached the vent stretching right over the command bridge. A well placed trio of morph bombs got her clear access, and she folded back into her Varia suit once she was out of the vent.

_X-ray visor initiated for better view in the low-lighted area._

_Warning: Space Pirate Command Bridge is badly damaged and may contain several potential threats. Large electrical surges have been detected. High temperatures in various computer consoles have been detected._

Samus walked up to the first console she saw that wasn't overheating or overflowing with power and zapping every other metal object within its radius. When her search presented nothing but weapon status updates, all of which reporting critical failures in all the ship's turrets, she moved on to the next console. She finally found access to the engines after her fourth try, and almost smiled. She pressed a few buttons until the system requested what speed she wanted, where they wanted to go, and when she wanted to take off. She stopped and radioed Ghor.

"Ghor, I found the control system. Is your side ready yet?" She waited for a response. It came after the longest seven seconds of her life.

"_Samus, these pirates are giving me more trouble that I'd expected, I can't even access the computer remotely, they've found some way to block the system from mine! You've going to have to hold that thought for now!"_

Samus looked throughout the entire command bridge. She had to leave and come back? It was nothing she hadn't done before, but she didn't think the world would let it be so easy.

And speaking of which, as if answering her thoughts, an Ing tore through the glass of the command bridge, shattering the glass, and it collided with Samus. Swamp water poured into the command bridge and instantly knocked Samus and the Ing towards opposite sides of the room.

Samus moved first, firing a missile and pulling herself towards the computer console. The Ing screeched and called for help, and four more Ing dove into the command bridge through the broken glass. Aran fired all the shots she could while accessing the computer system and setting a random course, and then setting a timer for the engines to start, approximately ten minutes. As soon as that was done, she turned to the Ing and searched for an escape route.

Luck wasn't on her side today, or at least the Pirate architects who originally built this ship weren't. The Ing were blocking the door, and the ventilation shaft she'd come in on was too high for her to reach now. Not to mention there were five of the creatures trying to kill her.

The first Ing moved to tackle her, trying to entangle her in its arms. Samus countered with missiles and a lot of firepower, which stunned the Ing enough to give her more time to think. Eventually she decided the only way to get out was the way the Ing got in. She made a dive for the front of the bridge and tried to climb out the broken glass the Ing had come through. The Ing didn't expect this, and she was out before they could attack again. Samus sank to the bottom of the swamp and slowly made her way to the surface. As she rose, she ran as fast as she could back into the hole Ghor had burned into the side of the hull, not an easy feat seeing as she was covered in strangely heavy mud. But she had to hurry. Ghor may not last much longer.

* * *

Ghor grunted as a Pirate blast hit a metal beam above him and exploded. He took a bold dive from his shelter behind a pile of debris and then hid to take cover from a large metal plate that had fallen from the ceiling.

The pirates continued to shoot, not seeming to care about anything else but defeating Ghor. The metallic Hunter calibrated his gun for more precise shots and prepared to fire. As soon as the pirates stopped firing, which they did every now and then for a few seconds' rest, he turned, exposing himself but also lining up to make three perfect headshots.

All three pirates dropped dead and Ghor returned to his cover as a pirate rocket flew past his head and exploded behind him, blowing up a broken metal door and sending debris across the entire room. Ghor grunted as metal shards bounced against his metal plating and dove down to the floor.

Across the room, metal shards dug themselves into two pirates, one of which panicked and fired his weapon aimlessly, three of the plasma shots flying into the ceiling and hitting a pipe, which burst and spewed fire into the center of the room. The pirates dove out of the way and Ghor rolled over several times. When he got up, he examined his left arm; burnt and malfunctioning.

The pirate commando of the group was growing tired of this stalemate with a single metallic hunter, so he ordered his remaining troops to take more offensive positions. Ghor found himself exposed even behind his cover and moved to hide behind a giant metal slab, the last cover he was going to have. Just as he dove for it, the pirate with the rocket launcher fired a perfectly timed shot. The rocket flew across the room almost in slow motion as Ghor noticed it coming straight for him as he was diving for the metal slab. The rocket's trajectory led it right to where Ghor's head would be upon their contact.

As that happened, an air vent above Ghor exploded as a Morph ball dropped three bombs and dropped into the room. As Samus unfolded and landed on the floor, she dropped between Ghor and the rocket. The rocket hit Samus in the chest and sent her flying over Ghor and into the wall.

The metallic hunter watched Samus lose consciousness and could hear the pirates roaring in success as they had just harmed the hunter they'd hated for so long, and without having tried at all. Their reward was a face full of heated plasma as Ghor ignited his plasma launcher and fired a powerful heated laser across the entire room, burning several pirates all in a matter of seconds, and overheating a computer console in the room in the process, which exploded and set three other pirates on fire. The five remaining pirates; three standard pirates, the commando, and the rocket-wielder, all turned their weapons towards Ghor's cover and unleashed hell upon it.

Ghor retaliated with four missiles, killing the three standard pirates and the fourth missile hitting the rocket-wielder and damaging the rocket launcher itself. The pirate roared and extended his melee weapon, ready for the worst.

Samus regained consciousness just as Ghor charged. The metallic hunter ran as fast as his mechanical legs could carry him and he extended his own melee blade as he got close. The pirate commando charged and the two had a brief encounter. Ghor swung and cut the pirate's arm exoskeleton off, and then grabbed the roaring commando in a headlock. He stabbed the commando in the back and then threw the body at the last remaining Space Pirate. The pirate dodged the meat shield and stood there, staring down the mechanical hunter.

Ghor and the melee pirate lunged at each other, parrying each other's attacks and never managing to land a solid blow. Samus got onto her feet and unsteadily ran to join them, but Ghor waved her back.

"Samus, get the engines online and at an unstable level. Your timer should be nearing zero! Open the engine casing and damage it all you can, and then we'll get out of here!"

Samus nodded and ran to the engine. She shot the locks holding the metal casing in place and threw it off to the side. The engine inner working seemed complex, but that's why her arm cannon was the weapon for the job. She fired several dozen shots into the machine and finally heard an alarm go off. Ghor and the pirate were both distracted for a second as the alarms went off in the ruined room, and then resumed their duel. It didn't last for very long.

The Ing that had attacked Samus earlier tore through the ceiling and rained into the room. Ghor didn't take the time to count them, he simple abandoned his fight with the pirate and ran towards Samus.

"Is the timer nearly out?" He yelled as the Ing screeched and surrounded all three of them. The pirate wasn't sure who to fight, but it stood at a battle-ready position all the same.

Samus shot a missile at the nearest Ing. "The timer's running at one minute. We can't take the path back, the road is blocked by wreckage. Any idea how else to get out?"

Ghor eyed the room with his enhanced vision and finally laid eyes on the ceiling.

"The black spider-monsters came in through the ceiling, so they had to get into the ship somehow. That's how we're getting out. Let's go! Can you make that jump?"

Samus smirked. "Can you?"

Ghor fired his laser at an Ing and shook his head.

Samus started running. "Jump off my back! I'll follow!" She ran past a particularly angry Ing and kicked it in the face. Ghor followed in suit, slicing at the Ing with his fiery blade.

Samus eyed the hole in the ceiling and timed her jump. As she did, Ghor jumped on an Ing and jumped towards Samus. He landed on her and jumped again, barely managing to claw onto the ceiling's broken metal. He swung himself into the hole and began crawling up the way the Ing had come in.

Samus rolled into a morph ball to reduce the collision with the floor as Ghor kicked off her back. She rolled between the Ing legs and then unfolded back into her Varia Suit. Her suit jetpack ready, she jumped into the air and ignited that double-jump feature. He hand clasped onto the metal on the ceiling, and Ghor's hand came down to keep her from falling. He hoisted her up and they began crawling through the shattered remains of the rooms and corridors of the once-powerful Space Pirate Battleship.

The alarms were going off and red lights were flashing across the entire ship. Fires had started again for some reason and the timer was at 10 seconds. The two hunters ignored the timer and continued to press against the debris. They could hear the Ing crawling and screeching to catch them, but they had no intention of dying today.

As the timer went off, the engines malfunctioned and exploded. The fire spread across the entire room, setting the other engines aflame, and their countdown was a matter of seconds and nothing more.

But it was enough time for Ghor and Samus to reach the edge of the ship and find another hole the Ing had carved to get into the ship. Samus looked down to see that if they were to jump, they would land in the thick swamp water. She jumped first. Ghor readied a jump, and then felt something tackle him. It was the pirate with the melee weapon. Ghor yelled in frustration and kicked the pirate off.

He stood up and extended his blade. "How are you still alive?" He shouted as he swung and was parried by the pirate. The ship began to explode all around them, and their duel lasted about ten seconds before Ghor finally got the chance to punch the Pirate in the chin and kick it back into the Battleship room. Ghor almost laughed and then jumped off the ship. The pirate groaned and moved to get up, until a beam from the room was popped off and landed on him. He was trapped.

That was the last Ghor would hear of him. As the mechanical hunter fell into the swamp water, the ship finally exploded.

* * *

Outside the Torvus Bog, a wisp of Phazon swirled in the air. The conscience of this Phazon swirl felt a territorial emotion towards Samus and the Pirates that were in the world of Phazon… But their knowledge of the history of Phazon was rich… Maybe the sentient form would extract all possible knowledge of the newcomers and then destroy them… Only time could tell to help study them…

* * *

**While there was a lot going on in this lengthy chapter, and I might have confused some, I think I managed to send the image I was hoping for… Well, hope you guys enjoyed, for the wait. Thanks for adding the story to your favorites, several did! Made my day!**


	9. Welcome Back

**Disclaimer: As always, I still do not own Metroid or any of its assets.**

**It's been SO long since my last update, (I have no excuse to why I waited so long!) but I decided to send in another chapter for the sake of this story. Any subscriber to this story probably forgot about it, but hey! I found the time to write this small chapter, so I know I'll find the time to write more!**

* * *

_Pirate's Logs: Entry 5, Expansion_

_The days are growing longer. There is no metaphor, the sun of Bryyo is in the sky longer than usual. When we first arrived, we had roughly sixteen hours of daylight before the night came, which lasted roughly 10 hours itself._

_We've gone from a 26 hour day to a 30 and ½ day. The navigational officers are clueless. Anybody else who could have helped us determine why is dead. Has Bryyo always been this way, day cycles changing for different seasons? It would explain the barren world, but regardless, it's confusing for the men. We schedule to work in the daylight so to avoid whatever dangers there may be in the night, but now we find an extra two hours of sunlight and two hours of night. Hopefully the days won't get longer still, I can imagine not sleeping…_

_Note: One officer has gotten sick. He was in one of the recon teams I sent to survey the terrain around us for more resources. His team reported nothing strange, yet when the medical officer got ahold of him, he reported signs of Phazon. How can this be? Phazon is gone. Dark Samus herself is gone. I watched the planet Phazon birthed from explode before my very eyes. I've quarantined him until I learn more._

* * *

Samus Aran and Ghor had just recently (literally moments ago) caused a downed Pirate Battleship in the Torvus Bog region to explode.

Since this was not truly the Torvus Bog of Aether, but a perfect recreation in which Samus was trapped inside somehow, the terrain, the wildlife, even Ghor himself, were just a manifestation created by the cloud of Phazon that was once Phaaze. Samus's ultimate goal was to break out of the mirror reality.

That was wonderful and all, but with the destruction of a very real Pirate Battleship mere meters from her, all she could think about was how to survive what came next: as the Battleship exploded, a flood of water came out of seemingly nowhere, sweeping up the remains of the Battleship, Ghor, and Samus.

The water swept them both up and carried them through the mirror world of Torvus Bog as if it had a destination. Samus and Ghor both struggled to grab onto something solid, but to no avail. The trees they were passing were getting washed up as well. At one point Samus could have sworn she saw an Ing being swept along with them, but she would never know for sure.

The water slammed into the mountains of Torvus Bog, with Samus and Ghor getting separated as they passed between the rock and dust, their momentum having more say in which way they headed than the water, which was starting to lose its power.

Samus instinctively switched to the Morph Ball to minimize whatever impact would come, but when it did, it was close to nothing. She merely… landed.

She receded from the Morph Ball and checked her surroundings. She was inches away from a cliff, and the mountains, tsunami, and Torvus Bog itself was nowhere to be found. She was most likely on another part of this Mirror Aether, the Agon Wastes.

As soon as she relaxed, the rock beneath her crumbled, sending her falling down the cliff. The entire drop was a good quarter of a mile. She did her best to slow herself by running her free hand into the cliff wall and causing as much friction as possible, but she still landed with a loud and hard thud.

* * *

She smashed into the solid, dry, dusty ground and simply lay there. Confused and suddenly thirsty, she struggled to pull herself back up, only to be shot in the chest and sent back on her knees.

Four very special-looking Space Pirates jumped from their perches in the dusty rocks around the Agon Wastes, landing firmly on the ground and aiming their guns at samus's head, chest, and throat. Samus got back up and backed up against the wall, feeling more surprised that worried.

The pirate furthest to the left extended his melee weapon from his arm. Samus took the opportunity and dove towards him. The pirate swung towards her and missed. The other three pirates shot and her and missed. Samus swung at the melee pirates head with her arm cannon and hit, hard.

The stunned pirate stumbled back, only to be pulled back as Samus used him as a shield from the others. The three pirates aimed carefully, but did not shoot. Instead, the two closest pirates pulled out their own melee weapons, with the fourth and farthest pirate backing up, keeping his rifle ready.

Samus shot her meatshield in the back of the head and moved to deal with the other two. The two pirates swung simultaneously, missing as she backed up and banged their heads together. They stumbled back. As they recovered, Samus sent a missile to the fourth pirate, blowing his arm clean off.

A charged shot from her cannon killed the first of the two melee pirates to recover, and the last one got kicked in the face and thrown into the cliff wall, headfirst.

Samus dusted herself off triumphantly and diagnosed her suit, checking for any damage that may have occurred during the tsunami, fall, or shot to the chest.

Before the results came up, Samus heard a roar as one of the pirates, specifically the one with no arm, charged at her with a maniacal look in its eye, melee weapon in its other, still intact hand. Before Samus could even more to fire, and icicle formed out of the ground and impaled it.

Samus winced, until four icicles formed beneath her and raised up to pin her. They rose and grew perfectly to pin her arms up and away from her body. More ice was forming to completely encase her, but she had other ideas.

She kicked the bases of the icicles pinning her arms until she fell back onto the ground. As she did, she heard someone running towards her. She rolled out of the way and fired a rocket in her attacker's general direction, but missed. Her attacker landed a blow, whacking her with its forearm. She fell onto her back, but rolled into the Morph Ball and flipped back out of it a moment later. She landed on her feet, cannon charged and ready. Without thinking twice, she fired at her opponent.

She hit home. Her attacker fell back on its back and Samus dashed forward. She moved to grab her attacker by the throat, arm cannon aimed directly to the face.

* * *

Her attacker, Rundas, showed no expression (not that Rundas's expressions were usually visible). The ice-cold Hunter simply lay there, as if waiting for something to happen. Samus, though extremely surprised, did not flinch. She knew she killed Rundas on Bryyo, and she knew that, like Ghor, this Rundas was just a manifestation of Phazon based off of her memory. Still, she certainly wasn't expecting to see him again.

Perhaps that's why Rundas was able to kick her off and freeze her in a block of ice a second later. Rundas relaxed and got to his feet, taking four steps forward until he was inches from Samus's face, a solid sheet of ice separating them.

"You'll have to forgive me, Samus." Rundas's voice, raspy as always and seemingly tired, brought back memories of Norion, where he and Samus first worked together.

"I couldn't resist fighting you. It seemed appropriate to return the favor." Rundas waved his hand, melting the ice around Samus's head.

"What favor?" Samus demanded.

Rundas shrugged. "You killed me, Samus. Back on Bryyo, the real Bryyo. I killed the pirates fighting you, and then we fought."

Samus blinked. "I remember, Rundas. You attacked me. And if I recall correctly, it was you that ended up killing yourself, not me. Dark Samus corrupted you, remember?"

Rundas sighed. "Yes, Samus, I remember. But that doesn't make it any better."

Samus calmed down. "If it helps, I truly do regret fighting you. It's not a memory I enjoy."

"Tell me about it," Rundas replied.

He looked around, observing the Agon Wastes. "Samus, you know you are in a world without Phazon, even though Phazon created it?"

Samus nodded.

"Then listen," Rundas moved to melt the remaining ice restraining Samus. "When you entered this world, you brought many Pirates with you. They are everywhere now. They pose a greater threat than you do, and I wish to get rid of them before they find a way out of this world."

Samus was now completely free, and the first thing she did was take three steps back. "Why?" She asked.

Rundas had started to pace back in forth, slowly, calmly. "Because this world, being of Phazon, does not want them here. Would you be welcoming to someone entering your mind? I am here to help you get rid of the Pirates. You've done well so far."

Samus shrugged. "I already have help. Ghor and I have been ridding this place of Pirates for quite some time now."

Rundas turned to face the hunter. "And where is Ghor now?"

"I…" Samus realized she hadn't seen him since the flood. "I don't know.. I lost him a few minutes ago during a flood…" She stepped forward. "Did you have anything to do with that?"

"Calm down, Samus." Rundas's body language suggested he was amused by the idea. "Ghor and I both want the same thing; the death of the intruders. What was the first thing you saw Ghor doing when you met him?"

Samus looked down as she recalled first encountering the mechanical hunter she once worked with. "Fighting pirates, if I remember correctly… So you didn't cause that flood?"

"I control cold, Samus," Rundas responded. "Not water. Doesn't matter. Ghor isn't here right now. If we find him along the way, then he can join us. But right now, this world wants you to help get rid of all the pirates, before they do something stupid."

"Stupid how?" Samus asked curiously and cautiously.

Rundas sighed again. "Samus, as I'm sure you've realized, this world isn't normal. I myself do not know exactly what rules it may or may not have. You and all the pirates entered this world at the same time. You've been running around this world for a few days now, but the ship you just destroyed in Torvus Bog had just crashed hours beforehand. Time doesn't work normally here."

"Also, these pirates have a leader, a pirate wearing impressive gold armor. He is smarter than the average pirate, managing limited resources and the hostile world of Bryyo skillfully. They believe they've been here for five months. In that time, they've fortified and have spread influence to the mirror worlds of "Elysia" and their homeworld. I – and this Phazon world – both fear their influence, and have no interest in them being here. If you wish to defeat them, you will need my help."

Samus crossed her arms. "Who's to say I want to defeat them at all? I want to leave this place and go back to the real world."

Rundas nodded. "Let me make you a deal, Samus Aran. I want to save this world from the pirates and you want to leave this world altogether. Help ME destroy the pirates here, and I'll personally make sure you get out."

Samus gave Rundas a testing look. "You can just… open a door and let me out now? I really doubt that, Rundas."

Rundas chuckled. "No, but I know HOW to escape. You help me with the pirates, and I'll give you that imformation."

Samus stared at the deceased hunter for a good amount of time before responding:

"Deal."

Rundas nodded, suddenly seeming excited and jumpy. "Excellent," he said contently. "Let's get moving, then!"

* * *

**Thanks for reading! I didn't expand the chapter too far, mostly because I wanted to post it as soon as possible, but if you liked it, don't worry! There's plenty to come. Cheers!**


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